Twitter and Facebook lock Trump’s account amid Capitol riots
Twitter and Facebook last night took the unprecedented step of locking US President Donald Trump’s account after his supporters stormed the Capitol.
In a message to protesters at the height of the violence, Trump told protesters “I love you” before telling them to go home.
He also repeated false claims that the election, which he lost to Joe Biden, was “fraudulent”.
Four people died in the ensuing carnage, including one woman who was shot and killed after a confrontation with police inside the Capitol.
Twitter initially flagged the posts, preventing users from retweeting, liking or replying to them due to the risk of violence.
The social media site then hit the posts and required the president to take them down due to “repeated and severe violations” of its civic integrity policy, which prevents election manipulation and interference.
“This means that the account of @realDonaldTrump will be locked for 12 hours following the removal of these Tweets. If the Tweets are not removed, the account will remain locked,” Twitter Safety said.
“Future violations of the Twitter Rules, including our Civic Integrity or Violent Threats policies, will result in permanent suspension of the @realDonaldTrump account.”
Trump has now deleted the offending tweets.
Meanwhile Facebook has blocked the president from using the site for 24 hours after identifying two policy violations in his posts.
“We made the decision that on balance these posts contribute to, rather than diminish, the risk of ongoing violence,” it said in a statement.
Facebook said it would also remove all posts that call for people to bring weapons to any location across the US, as well as any encouragement for events at the Capitol.
The measures are the toughest taken yet by the two social media giants, which have come under criticism for their failure to clamp down on misinformation posted to their platforms.
Both Facebook and Twitter have gradually toughened their policies amid increasingly baseless and violent claims made by the president.