Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has announced via his platform that President Donald
Trump will be blocked from using both Facebook and Instagram “for at least the next two weeks until the peaceful transition of power is complete.”
Zuckerberg blocked Trump’s accounts temporarily on Wednesday and prevented the President from posting content that asked those besieging the U.S. Capitol to stand down and leave peacefully. The company claimed Trump incited his followers to violence, and now Zuckerberg says the ban is extended “indefinitely,” extending at least until Biden takes over as President.
In a statement reported by the website techcrunch.com:
The shocking events of the last 24 hours clearly demonstrate that President Donald Trump intends to use his remaining time in office to undermine the peaceful and lawful transition of power to his elected successor, Joe Biden.
His decision to use his platform to condone rather than condemn the actions of his supporters at the Capitol building has rightly disturbed people in the US and around the world. We removed these statements yesterday because we judged that their effect — and likely their intent — would be to provoke further violence.
Following the certification of the election results by Congress, the priority for the whole country must now be to ensure that the remaining 13 days and the days after inauguration pass peacefully and in accordance with established democratic norms.
Over the last several years, we have allowed President Trump to use our platform consistent with our own rules, at times removing content or labeling his posts when they violate our policies. We did this because we believe that the public has a right to the broadest possible access to political speech, even controversial speech. But the current context is now fundamentally different, involving use of our platform to incite violent insurrection against a democratically elected government.
We believe the risks of allowing the President to continue to use our service during this period are simply too great. Therefore, we are extending the block we have placed on his Facebook and Instagram accounts indefinitely and for at least the next two weeks until the peaceful transition of power is complete.
Twitter also suspended President Trump’s account on Wednesday and demanded that he delete three tweets. Twitter officials said that the suspension would remain in place so long as the tweets were not removed, and that any further violation of its rules could result in an actual permanent account suspension for Trump.
“As a result of the unprecedented and ongoing violent situation in Washington, D.C., we have required the removal of three @realDonaldTrump Tweets that were posted earlier today for repeated and severe violations of our Civic Integrity policy,” the site wrote in announcing the suspension.
The offending Tweets included a pre-recorded video that pleaded with rioters to “go home,” before adding, “We love you; you’re very special.”
Trump deleted the Tweets that allegedly violated the companies Civic Integrity policy, but his account remained suspended for at least twelve hours.
Back in November Twitter head Jack Dorsey told a congressional hearing that once President Trump has vacated the office, he will no longer be extended to the same deference that Twitter has allegedly extended to him. “If an account suddenly is not a world leader anymore, that particular policy goes away,” the executive said.
YouTube has also announced that it will delete any videos that question the results of the 2020 election. YouTube said in a blog post that it has removed more than 8,000 channels and thousands of "harmful and misleading" videos about the election since September. Nearly 80% of the removed videos were taken down before they had 100 views, the company said, though it did not specify how many videos total it had reviewed.
And in what conservatives must take as a chilling attack on their future livelihoods, stores run by the Trump organization and Trump's campaign were taken off Shopify on Thursday for violating the company's policy of supporting people who condone violence.
Official Trump stores that sold Trump merchandise such as his signature “Make America Great Again” hats were removed from the platform, The Wall Street Journal reported. Trumpstore.com and shop.donaldjtrump.com are permanently banned.
"Shopify does not tolerate actions that incite violence," a Shopify spokesperson said. "Based on recent events, we have determined that the actions by President Donald J. Trump violate our Acceptable Use Policy, which prohibits promotion or support of organizations, platforms or people that threaten or condone violence to further a cause. As a result, we have terminated stores affiliated with President Trump."
Our old friend Dan Bongino summed-up the social media situation this way: When you fully grasp the fact that Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube are political operations first, and businesses second, everything makes sense.
The goals of the tech oligarchs are to dismantle the MAGA movement, to separate Donald Trump from communicating with the public and his supporters and to make sure no conservative-populist candidate or movement ever rises again. Once the Democrats take control of the government the speech suppression is going to get worse. If you value free speech, now is the time to vote with your feet and join more open platforms like Parler, MeWe, Gab, Rumble, Mastodon, Minds, and Vero.
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