Tech giants take a stand against Donald Trump

After suspending Potus’s account for two weeks and possibly indefinitely, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg wrote that the risks of allowing Trump to post misinformation regarding the elections “are simply too great”.

Initially, Facebook only imposed a 24-hour ban on his account but following the events of the unprecedented attack on capitol yesterday during the certification of Joe Biden as the new president of the United States, Facebook took down a video in which Trump tells rioters he “loves them” and removed other posts spreading misinformation before enacting a ban on his account that would last until Biden was sworn in – if not indefinitely.

In regards to Trump’s favourite platform of choice, Twitter, he was suspended from posting for at least 12 hours with a possibility for the ban to become permanent should Trump insist on violating Twitter rules.

The company also required that Trump delete three tweets for “severe violations of our Civic Integrity policy” or the account would remain locked endlessly, the former businessman and outgoing president complied and deleted the tweets.

When asked whether it had extended its original 12-hour block, a spokeswoman for Twitter said: “We’re continuing to evaluate the situation in real-time, including examining activity on the ground and statements made off Twitter. We will keep the public informed, including if further escalation in our enforcement approach is necessary.”

Due to Trump’s inability to use his account, Dan Scavino, White House director of social media posted on his behalf following the middle of the night certification of Joe Biden that despite disagreeing with the outcome of the elections, there will be an orderly transition on January 20th.

Other companies such as youtube and Snapchat also removed posts and banned Trump from utilizing their platform any further but did not specify when the ban would end.

Experts and citizens alike are commenting that the stand taken by tech giants was “a little too late” as Trump had been employing the platforms to incite violence and spread misinformation for years without consequence.

It is worth noting that the march and attack on Capitol Hill were, for the most part, organized online, using Facebook groups, pages and Twitter accounts with large followings to get as many people as possible on the hill steps to oppose 2020 election results.