Donald Trump Floats Launching New Social Media Platform After Twitter Ban
Following Wednesday’s violent attacks on the Capitol building, virtually all major social media platforms decided to suspend President Donald Trump, accusing him of inciting violence. The latest tech giant to remove the president’s account was Twitter, a network he has often used to communicate with supporters and opponents alike.
Almost immediately after he was banned, Trump returned to Twitter using the @POTUS account. As The Hill reported, in a series of messages that have since been removed, the commander-in-chief floated the idea of launching his own network in order to avoid censorship and allow conservatives to have a voice.
“I predicted this would happen. We have been negotiating with various other sites, and will have a big announcement soon, while we also look at the possibilities of building out our own platform in the near future.”
Trump accused Twitter of coordinating with “the Democrats and the Radical Left” and suggested that the move was meant to silence not only him, but all of his supporters. He accused Twitter of trying to destroy free speech and suggested that the Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act needs to be repealed.
“Twitter may be a private company, but without the government’s gift of Section 230 they would not exist for long,” he said.
In a statement, a Twitter spokesperson explained that ban evasion is against the company’s terms of service, but noted that government accounts such as @POTUS and @WhiteHouse will not be removed.
“As stated in our ban evasion policy, if it is clear that another account is being used for the purposes of evading a ban, it is also subject to suspension,” the spokesperson said.
As The Hill noted, Facebook announced Thursday that it would suspend Trump’s access to its servers until at least January 20, when President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration is scheduled to take place.
Snapchat also banned the commander-in-chief, while Shopify took down stores run by the Trump campaign. The social news aggregation site Reddit announced on Friday that it would be banning the main pro-Trump forum on its platform.
Earlier today, Google’s Play Store banned the conservative social media app Parler.
José Castañeda, a spokesperson for Google, said that Parler will be suspended from its listings as long as it allows “egregious content like posts that incite violence.”
Conservative politicians and pundits have promoted Parler as a right-leaning alternative to Twitter. Notably, Fox News anchor Sean Hannity said on Thursday that Trump, too, has joined the network.
The application could soon be removed from Apple’s store as well.
