Hours After Banning Trump, Twitter Now Deleting Posts from Official Government POTUS Account
Twitter deleted posts from the official government @POTUS account Friday after it permanently suspended President Donald Trump’s personal account.
Trump posted a series of tweets on the @POTUS account that said the social media company was “banning free speech.”
“As I have been saying for a long time, Twitter has gone further and further in banning free speech, and tonight, Twitter employees have coordinated with the Democrats and the Radical Left in removing my account from their platform, to silence me — and YOU, the 75,000,000 great patriots who voted for me,” Trump tweeted from the @POTUS Twitter account, according to Fox News.
“We will not be SILENCED! Twitter is not about FREE SPEECH. They are all about promoting a Radical Left platform where some of the most vicious people in the world are allowed to speak freely. STAY TUNED!”
The tweets were quickly deleted because Twitter does not allow banned individuals to tweet from alternate accounts, TechCrunch reported.
The @TeamTrump campaign account was also suspended after it attempted to tweet the president’s message, which was quickly deleted.
Trump tried to use his campaign account tonight as well. Third attempt to reach broad Twitter audience tonight. Twitter then took this tweet down too. And then the whole account. https://t.co/U8TNX7GFbN pic.twitter.com/DyzokEzI2F
— Eric Lipton (@EricLiptonNYT) January 9, 2021
“As we’ve said, using another account to try to evade a suspension is against our rules,” a Twitter spokesperson told TechCrunch.
“We have taken steps to enforce this with regard to recent Tweets from the @POTUS account. For government accounts, such as @POTUS and @WhiteHouse, we will not suspend those accounts permanently but will take action to limit their use.”
Musadiq Bidar, a tech reporter for CBS News, said Twitter has not completely ruled out suspending the @POTUS and @WhiteHouse accounts.
“It would do so if it was really needed to alleviate harm,” Bidar tweeted.
“Twitter also says if President Trump tried to evade the ban by creating a new personal account, that new account will also be subject to suspension.”
Twitter also says if President Trump tried to evade the ban by creating a new personal account, that new account will also be subject to suspension.
— Musadiq Bidar (@Bidar411) January 9, 2021
Twitter permanently suspended Trump from the platform on Friday, citing a “risk of further incitement of violence” in a blog post.
The announcement came after hundreds of employees demanded this week in a letter to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey that Trump’s account be permanently suspended following the riots at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, The Washington Post reported.
“Despite our efforts to serve the public conversation, as Trump’s megaphone, we helped fuel the deadly events of January 6th,” they wrote.
“We request an investigation into how our public policy decisions led to the amplification of serious anti-democratic threats. We must learn from our mistakes in order to avoid causing future harm.”
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