Twitter and Facebook have locked the account of President Donald Trump over his comments on the violence that rocked US congress on Wednesday.
Trump, who has refused to concede the election he lost to President-elect Joe Biden, had charged his supporters to march to the congress while the lawmakers were in the process of certifying the victory of his opponent in the November 3 election.
The protesters had marched to congress in their thousands, forcing the lawmakers to suspend the process.
Although the US president asked them not to be violent, he endorsed their action, saying “today will never be forgotten”.
He had also incited them via Twitter, making some claims considered to be inaccurate.
Responding to his action, Twitter removed a video where the president both called for the rioters to go home while also praising them and repeating the claims of voter fraud.
The microblogging site also locked Trump’s account for 12 hours and deleted three of his tweets.
Twitter also threatened permanent suspension of the president’s account if Trump continues to violate its policy.
“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,” Twitter said in a post to its TwitterSafety account.
“We are also exploring other escalated enforcement actions and will keep the public updated with any significant developments.”
Meanwhile, Facebook announced it had assessed “two policy violations against President Trump’s Page”.
The company tweeted: “This will result in a 24-hour feature block, meaning he will lose the ability to post on the platform during that time.”
Earlier, the platform’s vice president of integrity Guy Rosen, tweeted that Mr Trump’s initial video had been removed entirely from their platform.
“This is an emergency situation and we are taking appropriate emergency measures, including removing President Trump’s video,” he tweeted.
“We removed it because on balance we believe it contributes to rather than diminishes the risk of ongoing violence.”
https://twitter.com/TwitterSafety/status/1346970430062485505
We've assessed two policy violations against President Trump's Page which will result in a 24-hour feature block, meaning he will lose the ability to post on the platform during that time.
— Meta Newsroom (@MetaNewsroom) January 7, 2021