Twitter and Facebook suspend Trump accounts after protesters stormed Congress
Twitter and Facebook on Wednesday temporarily suspended the accounts of US President Donald Trump, as tech giants scrambled to counter his unfounded claims about the presidential election, amid riots in the capital.
Twitter hid Trump's tweets and requested that they be deleted "as a result of the continuing and unprecedented violent situation in Washington DC" after pro-Trump protesters stormed the Congress building in an attempt to force Congress to block confirmation of President-elect Joe Biden's victory.
A woman was shot dead during the chaos in the building.
Facebook later said it would block the Trump page from posting for 24 hours due to two violations of the site's policy.
Twitter said that it suspended Trump's account for 12 hours, and that if the tweets are not deleted, the account will remain closed, which means that the president will not be able to publish tweets from this account.
She added in a tweet that any future violations of the rules would lead to the account being suspended permanently.
Facebook and YouTube, a subsidiary of the Alphabet Group, removed a video of Trump in which he continued to make unsubstantiated claims that the elections had been rigged, even though he called on protesters to leave.
The head of Instagram, owned by Facebook, Adam Mosseri, said that the video had also been removed from Instagram and that the president's account on it would remain suspended for 24 hours.
Tech companies are under pressure to address misleading content on their platforms about the US election.
A White House spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.
Facebook Vice President for Integrity Jay Rosen said in a tweet that the social media company had removed Trump's video "because we believe it is increasing the risks of ongoing violence rather than reducing it."
YouTube said the video violates its anti-content policy that claims "widespread manipulation or errors have changed the outcome of the 2020 US election."
Facebook and Twitter had put it in place with warnings and took measures initially to slow the spread of the video.
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