Outgoing US President Donald Trump’s Twitter account was permanently suspended by the tech giant on Friday, 8 January, citing “risk of further incitement of violence”.
Twitter wrote in a blog post, “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.”
This development comes after a group of Trump supporters, whom he refers to as ‘patriots’, barged into the US Capitol building and wreaked havoc on 6 January.
WHAT DID TWITTER SAY ABOUT BANNING TRUMP?
The final decision of suspension was followed by a pair of tweets on Friday.
Twitter wrote, “These two tweets must be read in the context of broader events in the country and the ways in which the President’s statements can be mobilised by different audiences, including to incite violence, as well as in the context of the pattern of behaviour from this account in recent weeks.”
The company further said that the accounts are not above “rules and cannot use Twitter to incite violence.” The US-based microblogging had earlier temporarily suspended Trump’s account, but later cited two of Trump’s tweets, one of which was about him not attending President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration for their decision.
Twitter announced that the tweets violated its "Glorification of Violence Policy" and therefore, "user @realDonaldTrump should be immediately permanently suspended from the service."
WON’T BE SILENCED: TRUMP
However, after the suspension, a statement was put out from the official handle of Team Trump, which also stands suspended.
In a series of tweets, Trump said, “I predicted this would happen. We have been negotiating with various other sites, and will have a big announcement soon, while we also look at the possibilities of building out our own platform in the near future. We will not be SILENCED!”
He further said that the platform is promoting “radical Left where some of the most vicious people in the world are allowed to speak freely”.
“As I have been saying for a long time, Twitter has gone further and further in banning free speech, and tonight, Twitter employees have coordinated with the Democrats and the Radical Left in removing my account from their platform, to silence me — and YOU, the 75,000,000 great patriots who voted for me,” he added.
At the time of suspension Trump had 88.7 million followers.
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