Twitter permanently suspends Donald Trump’s account to prevent incitement of violence
Twitter has permanently suspended Donald Trump’s account, citing the risk of further incitement of violence following the storming of the US Capitol on Wednesday.
The US President has repeatedly used the platform to declare that the outcome of the 3 November election was fraudulent and to share other conspiracy theories.
Trump also urged his supporters to head to Washington DC on Wednesday and march on the Capitol to protest the election result.
The resulting riot left four Trump supporters and one Capitol police officer dead.
Twitter subsequently locked the President out of his account for 12 hours but has since made the suspension permanent.
“After close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence,” the company said in a tweet.
The suspension of the US President’s account, which had more than 88m followers, comes days before the end of Trump’s term.
The decision, which is the first time Twitter has banned a head of state, follows years of debate over how social media giants should moderate the accounts of global leaders.
Facebook announced earlier this week that it was suspending Trump’s account to at least the end of his presidential term.