Sharjah24 – AFP: Twitter blocked Donald Trump on Wednesday and threatened a permanent ban for breaking platform rules as social media scrambled to respond to violence in the US capital blamed on the outgoing president's repeated claims of election fraud.
In a rapidly evolving sequence of events, Facebook and YouTube took down videos posted by Trump, and Twitter followed suit as the platforms claimed he was inciting violent protests by his supporters, who stormed the US Capitol building.
Twitter said Trump's messages were violations of the platform's rules on civic integrity and that any future violations "will result in permanent suspension of the @realDonaldTrump account," his social media handle followed by some 88 million people.
The messaging platform said Trump's account would be locked for 12 hours and that if the offending tweets are not removed, "the account will remain locked."
The response from social media came amid accusations the president was attempting a coup, with protesters storming the Capitol building seeking to derail the certification of Joe Biden's election victory.
"This is an emergency situation and we are taking appropriate emergency measures, including removing President Trump's video," Facebook vice president of integrity Guy Rosen said in a tweet.
"We removed it because on balance we believe it contributes to rather than diminishes the risk of ongoing violence."
YouTube also removed a Trump video that repeated his baseless attacks on the integrity of the election he lost in November, following its policy barring claims challenging election results.
Facebook subsequently said it would search for and remove content which praised the storming of the Capitol or encouraged the violence.
The massive social network said it would also seek to take down additional calls for protests, including peaceful ones, if they violate a curfew imposed by the city of Washington, or any attempts to "restage" the storming of Congress.
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