Facebook, Twitter and YouTube recorded a video of President Trump addressing his supporters as a crowd of pro-Trump protesters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday afternoon. The websites said the video of Mr Trump appearing to sympathize with protesters and reiterating false claims about the election contributed to ongoing violence and misinformation policy violations.
Twitter and Facebook went a step further and temporarily suspended the president’s accounts.
Twitter said if Trump continues violating Twitter rules after being frozen for 12 hours, the @ realdonaldtrump account will be permanently banned.
FacebookThe company has “assessed two violations of the guidelines against President Trump’s page” and he will not be able to publish posts on the platform for 24 hours. Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, said it does the same.
In the now removed video, Mr. Trump said to his supporters, “I know your pain. I know you are hurt. We had a choice that was stolen from us” – a claim he continues to make after his own attorney general that there was No evidence of such a scam and courts threw out his complaints.
The president continued on the video, “But you must go home now. We must have peace.”
“We have to have law and order. We have to respect our great people in law and order. We don’t want anyone to be hurt,” he said before returning to a message of defiance: “… There was never a time so, where something like that happened, where they could take it from us all, from me, from you, from our country. “
“But we cannot play into the hands of these people,” he told his supporters. “We love you. You are very special. You see what happens, you see how others are treated who are so bad and so angry. I know how you feel, but go home and go back in peace Home. “
Twitter tagged the video first, preventing Mr. Trump’s followers from commenting, retweeting, or liking the video before shutting it down and then banning his account for 12 hours. The president needs to remove the tweets so his account can be restored, Twitter said.
“Due to the unprecedented and ongoing violent situation in Washington, DC, the removal of three @ realDonaldTrump tweets posted today for repeated and serious violations of our Civic Integrity Policy,” said a tweetLink to the guideline which prohibits “tampering with or interfering with elections or other civic processes” or the publication of false information about them.
Guy Rosen, who oversees Facebook’s work on security and integrity, tweeted that the social media site shut down Mr. Trump’s video as part of an “emergency situation.”
“We removed it because we believe it carries rather than reduces the risk of persistent violence,” said Rosen.
Facebook later said it was looking for and removing content that “praised and supports” the Washington, DC riots. It also removes content that “calls for guns to be shipped to locations in the US” that encourages or promotes events at the Capitol. calls for protests against the Washington DC curfew or attempts to “restore” violence in the coming days.
“We are appalled by the violence in the Capitol today. We are treating these events as an emergency,” said Facebook. “Our Elections Operations Center was already active in anticipation of the Georgia elections and the Congress vote to confirm the election, and we are monitoring activity on our platform in real time.”
YouTube said in a statement to CBS News that the company removed the video from the president’s channel for “violating our guidelines on content alleged to be widespread fraud or error, and the outcome of the US election 2020 have changed “.
However, the company will allow copies of the video to be uploaded “with additional context and sufficient educational, documentary, scientific or artistic value (EDSA)”.
The video stayed live on the Trump campaignParlerPage where it has gained 1.3 million views.
