Jack Dorsey’s social network explains his decision by the risks of “further incitement to violence” from Donald Trump.
Le Monde with AFP and Reuters
Twitter goes further than Facebook – which suspended Donald Trump’s account indefinitely, of at least two weeks. After the violence committed by pro-Trump rioters on Capitol Hill on Wednesday and the criticism that followed, the social network decided to suspend the outgoing president’s account “permanently” on Friday, January 8.
decision justified by the risks of “further incitement to violence” on the part of the outgoing US president:
“Having examined the content of recent tweets posted by the @realDonaldTrump account and in view of the current context, we have taken the decision to suspend this account in order to limit the risks of incitement to violence. “
The noose is tightening on Donald Trump, ousted from social networks one after the other. Thursday, Facebook and other services like Snapchat or Twitch, suspended the profile of the tenant of the White House for an indefinite period. But Twitter counts more than the others for Donald Trump, who had more than 88 million subscribers.
An account suspended for a few hours on Thursday
The twitter network, his favorite platform, had already escalated the retaliatory measures on Wednesday, suppressing several messages from the head of state, instead of simply masking them with warning notes. The Republican has not stopped contesting the validity of the presidential election, thus breaking the rules of the main platforms on respect for democratic processes.
Twitter then suspended his account for twelve hours before reactivating it on Thursday, to everyone’s surprise, the president being held largely responsible for Wednesday’s violence, which shocked the country and the country. foreign.
“Our public interest rules exist to allow people to hear first-hand what elected officials and political leaders have to say,” the California-based company detailed. “However, we have made it clear for years that these accounts are not entirely above our rules, and that they cannot use Twitter to incite violence, among other things.”
Social networks have been widely criticized for failing to oversee the president’s abuses and the use of their services by extremist groups.
Earlier on Friday, Twitter announced that it would permanently suspend accounts posting QAnon content, including that of Michael Flynn, a former national security adviser to Donald Trump, and that of Sidney Powell, a former lawyer for the President’s campaign.