December 22, 2024

Human Rights and Legal Research Centre

Strategic Communications for Development

Twitter permanently suspends Donald Trump, the president of the United States from using his official Twitter Account 

3 min read

President Donald Trump speaks in an address to the nation from the Oval Office at the White House about the coronavirus Wednesday, March, 11, 2020, in Washington. (Doug Mills/The New York Times via AP, Pool)

With the user name @realDonaldTrump, the Twitter management on Friday, 8 January 2021 permanently suspended the president of the US from using the social media platform for violating the company’s policies. According to Twitter management, the President of the United States has used the media platform to incite violence/riot in his last days in office as the president. 

It is worthy to note that before this action by the Twitter company management, his account was temporally suspended for 12 hours but later on the date above suspended permanently. The permanent suspension of the account according to Twitter Management is to prevent further incitement of violence in his remaining days in office as the president. “After close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them — specifically how they are being received and interpreted on and off Twitter — we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence. In the context of horrific events this week, we made it clear on Wednesday that additional violations of the Twitter Rules would potentially result in this very course of action. Our public interest framework exists to enable the public to hear from elected officials and world leaders directly. It is built on a principle that the people have a right to hold power to account in the open. However, we made it clear going back years that these accounts are not above our rules entirely and cannot use Twitter to incite violence, among other things. We will continue to be transparent around our policies and their enforcement” 

Nevertheless, this action from Twitter is coming when Facebook and Instagram had permanently suspended President Donald Trump from using their social media platforms citing incitement of violence following the declaration of Joe Bidden as the president-elect of the United States for the 2020 presidential elections. 

“On January 8, 2021, President Donald J. Trump tweeted: “The 75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me, AMERICA FIRST, and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!” Shortly thereafter, the President tweeted: “To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th.”

The Twitter management explained “Due to the ongoing tensions in the United States, and an uptick in the global conversation in regards to the people who violently stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, these two Tweets must be read in the context of broader events in the country and the ways in which the President’s statements can be mobilized by different audiences, including to incite violence, as well as in the context of the pattern of behavior from this account in recent weeks. After assessing the language in these Tweets against our Glorification of Violence policy, we have determined that these Tweets are in violation of the Glorification of Violence Policy and the user @realDonaldTrump should be immediately permanently suspended from the service. We assessed the two Tweets referenced above under our Glorification of Violence policy, which aims to prevent the glorification of violence that could inspire others to replicate violent acts and determined that they were highly likely to encourage and inspire people to replicate the criminal acts that took place at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.” 

Read details from Twitter Management through the link below. https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/suspension.html

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