(ETH) – Twitter has permanently suspended President Donald Trump’s account on Friday, citing “the risk of further incitement of violence.” cutting his communications to 88 million followers. According to NBC, Trump was initially banned for 12 hours on Jan. 6th due to “severe violations of our Civic Integrity policy,” after being accused of using the platform to tweet condemnation against Vice President Mike Pence as his supporters stormed the Capitol.
“After a 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. Twitter banned the president’s account after years of public pressure and several attempts to limit the reach of his account in recent days.
NBC News stated that hundreds of Twitter employees signed a letter urging Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to ban the president for using the platform to incite violence in the wake of the Capitol siege. “In the context of horrific events this week, we made it clear on Wednesday that additional violations of the Twitter Rules would potentially result in this very course of action,”
Twitter said in a blog post. “Our public interest framework exists to enable the public to hear from elected officials and world leaders directly. It is built on a principle that the people have a right to hold power to account in the open.” “However, we made it clear going back years that these accounts are not above our rules and cannot use Twitter to incite violence,” the post continued.
“We will continue to be transparent around our policies and their enforcement.” Meanwhile, Twitter has also permanently suspended former White House national security adviser Michael Flynn as well as Sidney Powell, who is also being accused of engaging in ‘harmful activity’ related to QAnon Conspiracies.
Fox News stated: Along with Flynn and Sidney Powell, Ron Watkins who is the head of the website 8kun, which had been named 8chan, and hosts posts about the QAnon conspiracy theory has also been purged. “The accounts have been suspended in line with our policy on Coordinated Harmful Activity,” a Twitter spokesperson said.
“We’ve been clear that we will take strong enforcement action on behavior that has the potential to lead to offline harm, and given the renewed potential for violence surrounding this type of behavior in the coming days, we will permanently suspend accounts that are solely dedicated to sharing QAnon content.”
