US PRESIDENT DONALD Trump has had his accounts temporarily banned from posting on both Facebook and Twitter after repeatedly violating the policies of both social media platforms.
Twitter said that Trump’s account is banned for 12 hours, and possibly longer, if he doesn’t delete three tweets following Wednesday night’s riot at the US Capitol building in Washington DC which left one person dead.
Facebook has banned his page for posting for 24 hours.
It is the first time that either of the social media platforms have stopped the US president from posting, as they scrambled to respond to the violence in the US capital incited by Trump’s repeated claims of election fraud.
The US president had again published his inaccurate claim that the US election result was incorrect and that he had been denied victory.
Twitter had initally applied labels to several of his tweets which stopped users from liking or retweeting Trump’s tweets.
However shortly afterwards, just after midnight Irish-time, Twitter said that three of his tweets had been classed as “repeated and severe violations” of its policies.
“This means that the account of @realDonaldTrump will be locked for 12 hours following the removal of these tweets,” a statement from an official Twitter account said.
“If the tweets are not removed, the account will remain locked.”
Facebook followed suit just under two hours later, banning posts on his Facebook page for 24 hours. His Facebook page is frequently in the top 10 most shared posts on the social media platform.
“We’ve assessed two policy violations against President Trump’s page which will result in a 24-hour feature block, meaning he will lose the ability to post on the platform during that time,” a spokesperson for Facebook said.
YouTube also removed a Trump video that repeated his baseless attacks on the integrity of the election he lost in November, following its policy barring claims challenging election results.
“As the situation at the United States Capitol Building unfolds, our teams are working to quickly remove livestreams and other content that violates our policies, including those against incitement to violence or regarding footage of graphic violence,” said YouTube spokesperson Alex Joseph.
The response from social media came amid accusations the president was attempting to prevent his removal from moffice, with protesters storming the Capitol building seeking to derail the certification of Joe Biden’s election victory.
“The violent protests in the Capitol today are a disgrace,” a Facebook spokesperson said.
“We prohibit incitement and calls for violence on our platform. We are actively reviewing and removing any content that breaks these rules.”
Facebook maintained that it was in contact with law enforcement officials and continued to enforce bans on QAnon conspiracy group, militarised social movements, and hate groups.
A #StormTheCapitol hashtag was blocked at Facebook and Instagram, according to Facebook.
Twitter’s first actions earlier in the day were aimed at limiting the reach of offending tweets from Trump and others.
“We have been significantly restricting engagement with tweets labeled under our Civic Integrity Policy due to the risk of violence,” the Twitter support team said.
“This means these labeled tweets will not be able to be replied to, retweeted, or liked.”
With reporting from AFP
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