Google-owned YouTube suspended Donald
Trump’s channel and removed a video for violating its policy against inciting
violence – the latest sanction by the social media giant against the US
president.
Online platforms and social media
companies are distancing themselves from, and taking action against, those who
encouraged or engaged in last week’s deadly violence on the US Capitol by the
president’s supporters.
“In light of concerns about the ongoing
potential for violence, we removed new content uploaded to Donald J Trump’s
channel for violating our policies,” YouTube said in a statement.
The channel is now “temporarily
prevented from uploading new content for a minimum of 7 days”, it said.
The video-sharing platform also said it
will be “indefinitely disabling comments” on Trump’s channel because of safety
concerns.
The homepage of the Trump channel
featured a month-old video of Trump casting doubt on the voting election
process that logged some 5.8 million views. The free channel itself has 2.77
million subscribers.
Supporters of Trump stormed the US
Capitol on January 6, trying to halt the certification by Congress of
President-elect Joe Biden’s election win.
Trump, who has challenged the validity
of Biden’s victory without producing evidence, initially praised his supporters
but later condemned the violence.
Politicians were forced to flee as the
building was mobbed by protesters who overwhelmed security forces. Five people
died in the violence, including one Capitol Police officer.
After the incident, Twitter and Facebook
removed Trump’s accounts and have been eliminating content supporting the
assault, while Amazon.com suspended Parler – a social media platform favoured
by many supporters of Trump – from its web-hosting service.
Facebook said on Monday it is taking
similar precautions leading up to the inauguration of Biden as president on
January 20.
In announcing the suspension last week,
Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg said Trump used the platform to incite violence
and was concerned he would continue to do so.
Content containing the phrase “stop the
steal” will be removed from Facebook and Instagram, according to executives
Monika Bickert and Guy Rosen.
Facebook is also keeping in place a
pause on all ads in the United States about politics or elections, meaning no
adverts from politicians including Trump.
Twitter went a step further by deleting
Trump’s account, depriving him of his favourite platform. It was already
marking his tweets disputing the election outcome with warnings.
The company also deleted more than
70,000 accounts linked to the QAnon conspiracy theory, which claims, without
any evidence, that Trump is waging a secret war against a global cabal of
satanist liberals.
Trump was also hit with suspensions by
services like Snapchat and Twitch.
A #StopHateForProfit campaign demanded
on Tuesday that YouTube take down Trump’s verified channel because it is giving
the president the opportunity “to continue spreading false information” about
the validity of the election.
“If YouTube does not agree with us and
join the other platforms in banning Trump, we’re going to go to the advertisers
next,” said Common Sense Media chief executive Jim Steyer, an organiser of the
campaign.
(Newsnow)
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