Facebook and Instagram started suspending Donald Trump indefinitely; then Twitter banned the official profile for good. This weekend, the dominoes continued to fall: Twitch and Snapchat deactivated the president’s account, while Reddit, TikTok and Pinterest placed restrictions on his supporters. We have gathered below the platforms that took some action after the invasion of the US Capitol.
Donald Trump (Image: Gage Skidmore/Flickr)
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O twitter banned Trump on Friday night, saying the account violates its Policy Against the Glorification of Violence.
The social network also removed the accounts of Michael Flynn, a former national security adviser; lawyer Sidney Powell, who spread false theories about US presidential election fraud; and Ron Watkins, who runs the 8kun forum, formerly known as 8chan. They all support Trump and promote the QAnon conspiracy theory.
Facebook and Instagram
O Facebook suspended Trump indefinitely, at least until Joe Biden takes office on January 20. O Instagram followed the same policy.
“We believe the risks of allowing the president to continue to use our services during this time are simply too great,” said CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
The two networks are also removing posts that support the invasion of the US Capitol, or that try to organize new invasions of the type, in addition to banishing conspiracy theories that induce violence, such as QAnon.
Twitch and Snapchat
Trump’s official channel on the streaming platform Twitch has been deactivated. “Given the current extraordinary circumstances and the president’s incendiary rhetoric, we believe this is a necessary step to protect our community and prevent Twitch from being used to incite further violence,” the Amazon-owned company said in a statement.
O Snapchat used a similar argument to close the president’s account, claiming it was used to promote hatred and incite violence.
Google, Apple and Amazon
Parler (Image: Bruno Gall De Blasi/Tecnoblog)
Google and apple took no direct action against Trump, but banned the talker, an alternative social network widely used by supporters of the American president. THE amazonin turn, cut the app’s access to the AWS cloud, preventing it from working for the next few days – but it promises to return.
YouTube
O YouTube went on to implement a rule that allows it to remove any channel that spreads disinformation about the US elections, including Trump’s official profile – which still remains on the air.
Meanwhile, Steve Bannon’s War Room channel was banned on Friday: the former White House chief strategist had been inciting violent action for months and claiming the election was stolen from Trump.
Reddit and Discord
Community r/donaldtrump banned (Image: Playback/Reddit)
Trump does not have an official account on reddit, but the site hosted the r/DonaldTrump community that supported the president and spread false #StopTheSteal theories about election fraud. The group was banned on Friday because its usage policies “prohibit content that promotes hate or encourages, glorifies, incites or calls for violence,” the company says.
discord, in turn, decided to ban The Donald server. “While there is no evidence that it was used to organize the January 6 riots, Discord decided to ban the entire server today due to its open connection to an online forum used to incite violence and plan an armed insurrection in the US.” explains the company in a statement.
TikTok and Pinterest
Trump definitely did not have an official profile on the TikTokand actually wanted the app of Chinese origin to be sold to an American company, under penalty of being banned – which did not happen.
Instead, TikTok has pledged to remove “content or accounts that attempt to incite, glorify, or promote violence,” as well as redirect hashtags like #StormTheCapitol and #PatriotParty to its community guidelines.
O Pinterest did something similar: in fact, the social network had been limiting hashtags like #StopTheSteal since November and “continues to monitor and remove harmful content, including misinformation and conspiracy theories that may incite violence.”
Stripe and Shopify
THE stripe will no longer process payments for Trump’s election campaign, which is still raising money. And the e-commerce platform Shopify toppled two stores associated with the president for violating his policies on promoting violence.
With information: Axios.