(UPDATE: This post was originally about Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s explanation for not banning Donald Trump from its platform in the wake of recent events, despite hundreds of his employees imploring him to do so. But at 6:21pm EST today, the company announced that it was finally “permanently suspending” the disgraced president from the platform “due to the risk of further incitement of violence.”)
https://twitter.com/TwitterSafety/status/1347684877634838528
https://twitter.com/TwitterSafety/status/1347684878574366721
https://twitter.com/TwitterSafety/status/1347684879526481925
https://twitter.com/TwitterSafety/status/1347684880403066881
And finally, for the big reveal…
https://twitter.com/lachlan/status/1347684869061664768?s=10
*****
(Below is the original version of this post.)
Donald Trump finally conceded the 2020 presidential election on Thursday, months after all the votes were counted and a day after a violent coup attempt at US Capitol was incited by the president of the United States. Despite all of that, many couldn’t help but speculate that Trump finally verbally agreed to a peaceful transition of power only because he couldn’t tweet.
Several social media companies took action following a violent attack by Trump followers in Washington on Wednesday. The New York Times reported Friday that Reddit banned a Trump-centric forum on Friday. A bot could quite literally followed as Rudy Giuliani’s follower count diminished on Friday when QAnon-related accounts were removed from the platform. And those reporting on QAnon activity on the platform saw their accounts suspended when the conspiracy’s followers rushed Twitter support to prevent their actions.
But Trump, despite clearly violating the rules of the site and seeing his tweets removed and account suspended in the wake of the MAGA riot, remains on Twitter as of Friday evening. That comes even after hundreds of employees at Twitter have reportedly lobbied for his removal from the platform altogether, like Sidney Powell and Lin Wood and Michael Flynn before him. According to The Verge, Twitter employees have circulated a letter demanding the company remove the president from the platform for a laundry list of violations.
“We must examine Twitter’s complicity in what President-Elect Biden has rightly termed insurrection. Those acts jeopardize the wellbeing of the United States, our company, and our employees,” they wrote.
The letter writers also call for Twitter to “provide a clear account” of the company’s decision to temporarily suspend Trump’s account and to investigate “Twitter’s role in today’s insurrection.”
“We must learn from our mistakes in order to avoid causing future harm,” they wrote.
Despite growing pressure from inside and outside the company to deplatform Trump, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has resisted those calls. In a statement sent within the company and reported by The Verge, Dorsey said Twitter had drawn “a very clear line in the sand” regarding what Trump cannot do on Twitter, but said he had not crossed it and therefore the company would not delete his account.
“It’s important we follow a clear and public rule set that can endure beyond any one moment,” Dorsey wrote. “Why? In order to earn trust. I know it may not feel that way right now.”
Dorsey also argued that it was up to elected leaders to repair the damage from Wednesday’s attack. “We aren’t the government,” he said. “Our elected officials must do the work to right this and bring the country together. Our role is around the integrity of the conversation of that work, and doing everything we can to promote healthy discourse, knowing it’s not always going to be accepted in the short term. But it will be over the long term. I’m certain of that.”
Dorsey said that Twitter had drawn “a very clear line in the sand” by saying it would permanently suspend Trump if he further violated the platform’s rules. “If that line is crossed, we will do what we said we are going to do,” he wrote.
Trump, whose personal account on Twitter has more than 88 million followers, has tweeted just three times since two posts were removed and his account was suspended amid the insurrection he sparked in Washington on Wednesday. The Daily Beast reported on Thursday that Trump was furious his ability to tweet was taken away from him, and there’s speculation that Twitter may be willing to take more action against Trump and his violent rhetoric when he leaves office. But until then, it seems Twitter is hesitant to remove Trump from the platform permanently, for better or worse.