2 more bans for Trump.
Youtube suspended President Donald Trump from uploading new videos to his official account for at least a week, making the decision days after fellow social media giants Twitter and Facebook shut the president out of his accounts because of concerns his posts will incite violence.
Meanwhile, Snapchat permanently banned Trump’s account, saying he has violated the mobile app’s rules many times by trying to spread hate speech and incite violence.
“In the interest of public safety, and based on his attempts to spread misinformation, hate speech, and incite violence, which are clear violations of our guidelines, we have made the decision to permanently terminate his account,” Snapchat said in statement.
Google-owned Youtube said it removed a video uploaded Tuesday for violating its policies and “in light of concerns about the ongoing potential for violence” in the wake’s after last week’s Capitol siege.
Youtube wouldn’t say which video broke its rules, but a review of archived versions of its site suggests it was a clip from a news conference Trump gave to reporters where he said his comments to supporters before the Capitol attack were “totally appropriate.”
In the same clip, which is available on C-SPAN, Trump said social media companies were making a “catastrophic mistake” and doing a “horrible thing for our country” by penalizing him.
The White House didn’t respond to a request for comment.
On Wednesday, the White House Twitter account shared a video statement from Trump. He didn’t directly address tech companies, but he hinted at the issue with a jab at the “unprecedented assault on free speech we have seen in recent days.”
“These are tense and difficult times,” he said in an uncharacteristically calm statement. “The efforts to censor, cancel and blacklist our fellow citizens are wrong and they are dangerous. What is needed now is for us to listen to one another, not to silence one another.”
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Wednesday issued formal legal demands to Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Twitter, aiming to investigate their recent moves to ban Trump and shut down the alternative social network Parler.