Tech giants took a stance on Wednesday after violence sabotaged the joint Senate –House of Representatives session to confirm Joe Biden’s electoral win. Twitter and Facebook led the charge and marked Trump’s updates instigating insurrection as ‘being reviewed’ first to taken down later on.
YouTube said it had removed a video by President Trump addressing the Capitol attack, in which he said the election was “stolen.”
Twitter required Trump to take down various tweets fanning his false claims about a rigged election, and warned the president that his account would remain locked until 12 hours after he did so. Trump appeared to have removed the tweets sometime Wednesday night, indicating he will regain access to his account Thursday morning, according to information provided by a Twitter spokesperson about its labeling policies.
“Future violations of the Twitter Rules, including our Civic Integrity or Violent Threats policies, will result in permanent suspension of the @realDonaldTrump account,” the company said. “Our public interest policy — which has guided our enforcement action in this area for years — ends where we believe the risk of harm is higher and/or more severe.” A Twitter spokesperson said it was the first time the company had locked Trump’s account over violations not related to claims of copyright infringement.
In a similar fashion, Facebook published a corporate post explaining their “response to Washington’s Capitol violence”, indicating that they have been searching for and removing content that praises and supports the storming of the US Capitol, calls to bring weapons to locations across the US, show “Incitement or encouragement of the events at the Capitol, including videos and photos from the protestors. At this point they represent promotion of criminal activity which violates our policies”, calls for protests — even peaceful ones — if they violate the curfew in DC or attempts to restage violence tomorrow or in the coming days. “As a part of this, we removed from Facebook and Instagram the recent video of President Trump speaking about the protests and his subsequent post about the election results. We made the decision that on balance these posts contribute to, rather than diminish, the risk of ongoing violence.” They have also updated their labels on “posts across our platforms that attempt to delegitimize the election results.” The new text reads: “Joe Biden has been elected President with results that were certified by all 50 states. The US has laws, procedures, and established institutions to ensure the peaceful transfer of power after an election.”
Meanwhile, Google CEO Sundar Pichai condemned the events on Capitol Hill Wednesday as “the antithesis of democracy” in a memo to employees, stating that “Holding free and safe elections and resolving our differences peacefully are foundational to the functioning of democracy.”
Apple’s CEO Tim Cook tweeted his discontent with the situation: “Today marks a sad and shameful chapter in our nation’s history. Those responsible for this insurrection should be held to account, and we must complete the transition to President-elect Biden’s administration. It’s especially when they are challenged that our ideals matter most.”