Twitter has said in a statement that it has suspended President Donald Trump’s account from the social media platform on Friday night.
In a statement released, Twitter said that it took the rare action “due to the risk of further incitement of violence.”
President Donald Trump who had more than 88 Million followers has been permanently suspended from Twitter. Prior to the recent events, the outgoing President of the United States had been temporarily suspended from Twitter for 12 hours after he posted 3 tweets that Twitter deemed as violating its rules against interfering in elections and civic process.
The move to temporarily suspend the Twitter account came after a mob stormed the US Capitol which temporarily halted the certification of Joe Biden’s victory as the next US president which resulted in the death of 5 people.
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
“In the context of horrific events this week, we made it clear on Wednesday that additional violations of the Twitter Rules would potentially result in this very course of action,” Twitter wrote. “… We made it clear going back years that these accounts are not above our rules and cannot use Twitter to incite violence.”
After failing to condemn a group of his supporters who staged a violent riot in the Capitol building, Twitter said that Trump’s tweets contained “repeated and severe violations” of its policy on civic integrity and threatened that any future violations would result in “permanent suspension” of the president’s account.
While Twitter had suspended the account for 12 hours, Facebook had taken more drastic measures by locking the President’s accounts for 2 weeks right up until the 20th of January Joe Biden’s inauguration.