Twitter on Friday banned US President Donald Trump from its site, citing his role in inciting violence at the US Capitol last week. Prior to the more, Trump's account had 88.7 million followers.
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"After close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them – specifically how they are being received and interpreted on and off Twitter – we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence," the company said late Friday.
The move is the harshest measure Twitter can impose on a user. It appeared to be the first time the social media giant has taken such action against a world leader.
After close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence.https://t.co/CBpE1I6j8Y
– Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) January 8, 2021
A senior administration official said the outgoing president "went ballistic" after Twitter permanently took down his account,
A defiant Trump lashed out in response, accusing Twitter of having "coordinated with the Democrats and the Radical Left" to remove his account.
According to CNN, he threatened regulation, promising a "big announcement" to come.
Stating similar concerns, Facebook and YouTube also took measures to limit Trump's access pending the transition of power on Jan, 20.
Facebook and Instagram have suspended Trump at least until Inauguration Day. Twitch and Snapchat also have disabled Trump's accounts, while Shopify took down online stores affiliated with the president and Reddit removed a Trump subgroup. Twitter also banned Trump loyalists including former national security advisor Michael Flynn in a sweeping purge of accounts promoting the QAnon conspiracy theory and the Capitol insurrection. Some had hundreds of thousands of followers.
The White House did not immediately respond to the move, but Trump appeared to try to defy Twitter's ban by using @POTUS, and later his @TeamTrump campaign account, both of which were suspended.
"We will not be SILENCED!" @POTUS tweeted before it was taken down.
In a statement issued by the White House on Saturday, Trump said he is now "negotiating with various other sites" and looking "at the possibilities of building out our own platform in the near future."
Trump may launch his own platform. But that won't happen overnight, and free speech experts anticipate growing pressure on all social media platforms to curb incendiary speech as Americans take stock of Wednesday's violent takeover of the U.S. Capitol by a Trump-incited mob.
Experts had predicted Trump might pop up on Parler, a 2-year-old magnet for the far right that claims more than 12 million users and where his sons Eric and Don Jr. are already active. Parler hit headwinds, though, on Friday as Google yanked its smartphone app from its app store for allowing postings that seek "to incite ongoing violence in the U.S." Apple followed suit on Saturday evening after giving Parler 24 hours to address complaints it was being used to "plan and facilitate yet further illegal and dangerous activities." Public safety issues will need to be resolved before it is restored, Apple said.
Amazon struck another blow Saturday, informing Parler it would need to look for a new web-hosting service effective midnight Sunday. It reminded Parler in a letter, first reported by Buzzfeed, that it had informed it in the past few weeks of 98 examples of posts "that clearly encourage and incite violence" and said the platform "poses a very real risk to public safety."
Parler CEO John Matze decried the punishments as "a coordinated attack by the tech giants to kill competition in the marketplace. We were too successful too fast," he said in a Saturday night post, saying it was possible Parler would be unavailable for up to a week "as we rebuild from scratch."
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