Adedapo Adesanya
By Adedapo Adesanya
Following his role in the escalation of unrest and disruptions in legislative proceedings in the United States on Wednesday, President Donald Trump’s Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram accounts have been temporarily suspended.
The President had been instrumental to the violence that broke out when his supporters stormed the US Capitol, where the country’s legislative arm holds proceedings.
Twitter blocked Mr Trump’s account for 12 hours and also went on to remove three tweets made by the President while Facebook and Instagram have suspended the accounts for 24 hours.
The President has often used his social media handles to comment on issues and attack his detractors and ahead of elections held last November, which he lost to Joe Biden, Twitter had proactively fact-checked his posts.
Twitter said it required the removal of the three tweets for “severe violations of our Civic Integrity policy” and said the President’s account would remain locked if the tweets were not removed.
It went on to say that “Future violations of the Twitter Rules… will result in permanent suspension of the @realDonaldTrump account”.
“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.
“We removed from Facebook and Instagram the recent video of President Trump speaking about the protests and his subsequent post about the election results. We made the decision that on balance these posts contribute to, rather than diminish, the risk of ongoing violence,” Facebook said in its statement.
Yesterday, President Trump’s supporters breached the security perimeter, clashed with police and entered the Capitol, leading to the death of one woman.
The violence brought to a halt congressional debate over Democrat Joe Biden’s election win.
