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from the twitter-and-facebook-and-twitch-and-snapchat-and... dept.
Twitter permanently suspends Trump's account:
US President Donald Trump has been permanently suspended from Twitter "due to the risk of further incitement of violence", the company says.
Twitter said the decision was made "after close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them".
Mr Trump had earlier been locked out of his account for 12 hours.
Twitter then said that it would ban Mr Trump "permanently" if he breached the platform's rules again.
Reacting to the permanent ban, Trump 2020 campaign adviser Jason Miller tweeted: "Disgusting... if you don't think they're coming for you next, you're wrong."
It comes after Mr Trump tweeted several messages on Wednesday, calling the people who stormed the US Capitol "patriots".
Hundreds of his supporters entered the Capitol building as the US Congress attempted to certify Joe Biden's victory in the presidential election. The ensuing violence led to the deaths of four civilians and a police officer.
The siege took place just hours after Trump addressed supporters and told them: "We will never give up; we will never concede."
[...] On Thursday, Facebook said it had suspended Mr Trump "indefinitely". The popular gaming platform Twitch also placed an indefinite ban on the outgoing president's channel, which he has used for rally broadcasts. So has Snapchat.
Two online Trump memorabilia stores were closed this week by e-commerce company Shopify. On Friday, Reddit banned its "donaldtrump" forum for the president's supporters.
[...] The big question now is, can Trumpism survive without the backing of mainstream media? Or will it simply slip into the shadows of the internet?
(Emphasis retained from original.)
Also at Ars Technica, CNET
Full Twitter explanation at: blog.twitter.com
(Score: 3, Insightful) by helel on Saturday January 09 2021, @06:43PM (2 children)
You are completely right, up to here. Trump never could have gotten the nomination without Twitter and even as president it played an important roll in maintaining his support.
And here you go off the rails. If "the elites" really were conspiring against him they would have kicked him off Twitter and Facebook years ago. It's not some secret that Twitter was an absolutely vital component of his grip on power.
The alternative would be to suggest that "the elites" did try to get him kicked off social media but that the executives at Twitter and Facebook were firmly in his camp and could not be persuaded. But that would mean that the last four years of complaints I've heard about those companies "censoring the right" were honestly mistaken, at best, or outright lies trying to cover up the hard right lean of both platforms!
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 09 2021, @06:59PM (1 child)
This is where you're mistaken. Before the riots, they didn't feel the Overton window covered censoring him yet. When the riots started happening, there were slight feelers of censorship for supposedly inciting the riots further. The push became stronger once he questioned the results of the "most secure election ever". Now in Trump's last days and with the show at the Capitol, the left is portraying Trump and half the country that voted for him as the plotters of a coup attempt. With so few days remaining, nobody's going to put their neck out for no reward and say "Hey, this is (still) our President, we should hear what he has to say!".
You're wrong if you think Twitter is his lifeline of support. His followers are sitting on discussion sites (that haven't been deplatformed yet) and relaying info from Twitter. They could relay from any other medium he chooses to use.
(Score: 3, Informative) by helel on Saturday January 09 2021, @07:28PM
Nobody is portraying all of the 23% of the nation that voted for Trump as treasonous, just Trump himself and those who helped him engage in his coup attempt [businessinsider.com.au]. That said, anyone who still supports Trump is supporting a traitor against the United States.
As for banning from Twitter four years ago vs now... It's not like they've been shy about banning Trumps critics [foxnews.com]*. Maybe it's some kind of 4D chess to help him so much it hurts him but Occam's Razor would suggest that it's more likely they were just strait up helping him.
* Twitter claims they banned the accounts for using bot's to boost their follower count but Trump does the same thing [msn.com]...