Twitter announced on Friday (08/01) that it has banned US President Donald Trump from the platform. Trump's expulsion comes two days after an invasion of the Capitol, the US Congress building, which resulted in five deaths.
The company's statement reads: "After careful review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context surrounding them, we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence."
The terrible repercussions of the invasion of the US Capitol were fundamental for Twitter to ban Trump. A crowd of white supremacists, all in favor of the current president, occupied the US Congress building in protest against the certification of Joe Biden as president-elect.
Initially, Twitter had banned Trump from have access to your account for 12 hours due to “serious violations” of the site’s rules. During the invasion, the current president had published messages claiming that the elections had been rigged, calling the protesters “patriots”.
Twitter had previously indicated that if Trump continued to post misleading content, his account would be permanently banned. Today, two new posts have led to permanent suspensions. According to Twitter, the posts “should be read in the context of broader events in the country and the ways in which the President’s statements could be used, including to incite violence.” For those who want to view the archive of messages posted on the deleted account, you can do so at Trump Twitter Archive, a site that saves them all.
The company added that the new tweets were “highly likely to encourage and inspire people to replicate criminal acts at the Capitol”.
Officials were already calling for Trump's ouster
Earlier this Friday, more than 300 employees at Twitter signed an internal petition calling for Trump's expulsion. “We must examine Twitter’s complicity in what President-elect Biden has rightly called an insurrection,” the letter said. “These acts jeopardize the well-being of the United States, our company, and our employees.”
Twitter's decision follows that of Facebook, which banned Trump for an "indefinite" period. According to the company's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, the risks “were too great” to keep the current American president’s account active.
Through which channels you reach those people, classic and out of the box. The Verge
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