NEW YORK (WCBS 880) — Twitter and Facebook late Wednesday evening locked President Donald Trump’s account for at least 12 and 24 hours, preventing the president from posting after violent riots broke out at the U.S. Capitol.
Twitter officials say they updated its guidelines to include a “civic integrity policy” because of “the unprecedented and ongoing violent situation in Washington, D.C.”
The rule says users may “not use Twitter’s services for the purpose of manipulating or interfering in elections or other civic processes.”
This means that users cannot post or retweet content that “suppresses participation, or misleads people about when, where or how to participate in a civic process” – this includes political elections, censuses or major ballot initiatives.
Twitter said President Trump’s tweets on Wednesday defending the actions of his supporters who stormed the Capitol Building, with some making it all the way to the Senate floor, contained “repeated and severe violations” of its civic integrity policy."
Three of his tweets were deleted from the platform and his account was locked for 12 hours. Twitter has demanded that he remove all tweets that excuse violence or else his account will be permanently suspended.
“As a result of the unprecedented and ongoing violent situation in Washington, DC, we have required the removal of three @realDonaldTrump tweets that were posted earlier today for repeated and severe violations of our Civic Integrity policy,” the Twitter Safety account wrote in a series of tweets. “This means that the account of @realDonaldTrump will be locked for 12 hours following the removal of these Tweets. If the Tweets are not removed, the account will remain locked. Future violations of the Twitter Rules, including our Civic Integrity or Violent Threats policies, will result in permanent suspension of the @realDonaldTrump account.”
Facebook then said it would lock Trump’s account for 24 hours, preventing him from also posting on that service.
“We’ve assessed two policy violations against President Trump’s Page which will result in a 24-hour feature block, meaning he will lose the ability to post on the platform during that time,” Facebook said in a statement.
Among the deleted tweets was a short video of the president urging supporters to "go home" while repeating false claims about the integrity of the presidential election. Facebook and YouTube had also removed the video.
This is the first time Twitter has taken significant action against the president, who has had several posts flagged for violence and misinformation in the past.
Since Trump’s election loss, many people have called for his account to be deleted and Twitter previously confirmed his account would no longer be granted special status after Jan. 20.
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