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09th Jan 2021

Twitter explains why it has permanently suspended Donald Trump

Alan Loughnane

Donald Trump

He’s gone.

Twitter announced on Friday night that it had “permanently suspended”, in other words, banned Donald Trump from its platform.

The decision came amid a purge of online platforms used by Trump and his supporters since Wednesday.

Trump was locked out of his account for 12 hours on Wednesday after he called the people who stormed the US Capitol “patriots” and “very special people”.

Twitter said after further review of his tweets, the decision was made to ban him “due to the risk of further incitement of violence.”

Trump had posted two tweets on Friday after his initial suspension was lifted.

In one, he wrote: “The 75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me, AMERICA FIRST, and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!”

Twitter said this tweet “is being interpreted as further indication that President Trump does not plan to facilitate an ‘orderly transition'”.

In another, the president tweeted: “To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th.”

“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,” Twitter said in a statement Friday.

“Due to the ongoing tensions in the United States, and an uptick in the global conversation in regards to the people who violently stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, these two Tweets must be read in the context of broader events in the country and the ways in which the President’s statements can be mobilized by different audiences, including to incite violence, as well as in the context of the pattern of behavior from this account in recent weeks.”

Twitter said it would not suspend intuitional accounts like @POTUS unless it had to in order to avoid real-world harm, but that it could limit those accounts’ capabilities. These accounts will be transferred to the next administration on 20 January.

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