“There have been good arguments for private companies to not silence elected officials, but all those arguments are predicated on the protection of constitutional governance,” said Alex Stamos, Facebook’s former chief of security, in a tweet on Wednesday shortly before Facebook and Twitter temporarily suspended Trump’s accounts. That appeared to change after Wednesday’s assault on the Capitol.
Here’s Why That Won’t ChangeĬhief among the platforms’ reasons for not banning Trump at that point were that as President, his words were inherently worthy of public attention, scrutiny and discussion. Read More: Trump’s Twitter Has Defined His Presidency. But it allowed the tweet to remain accessible behind a warning message, with Twitter saying in a statement it “determined that it may be in the public’s interest for the Tweet to remain accessible.” Facebook, meanwhile, refused to take any action against Trump’s post, prompting some employees to stage a walkout. As Black Lives Matter protests spread around the country in late May after the police killing of George Floyd, Twitter prevented most ways of engaging with a tweet by Trump that said “when the looting starts, the shooting starts”-which the company said violated its rules on incitement to violence.
