Facebook has banned President Donald Trump from using its social network or Instagram “indefinitely, covering the last two weeks of his presidency.
In a post on the site, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote that Trump’s refusal to condemn his extremist supporters who stormed and occupied the U.S. Capitol building Thursday, which left four dead, showed that he “intends to use his remaining time in office to undermine the peaceful and lawful transition of power to his elected successor, Joe Biden.”
For weeks leading up to Wednesday’s Congressional vote to certify states’ electors for President-elect Joe Biden, some Trump supporters openly planned a violent confrontation at the Capitol. Trump had repeatedly endorsed a planned gathering, at which he encouraged supporters to march to the Capitol.
Hours after the rioters began occupying the Capitol, Trump issued a video message on multiple social media platforms instructing them to “go home,” but also repeating the falsehood that he was the true winner of the election.
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“His decision to use his platform to condone rather than condemn the actions of his supporters at the Capitol building has rightly disturbed people in the US and around the world,” Zuckerberg wrote. “We believe the risks of allowing the President to continue to use our service during this period are simply too great.”
Twitter, where Trump is particularly active, has not banned Trump’s entire account, but removed the tweets where he addressed his violent supporters and said he could resume control of his account 12 hours after he deleted those tweets, which he did Wednesday evening.
Shopify, which runs online stores for Trump’s campaign, said in an emailed statement that it had taken Trump’s stores offline
“Based on recent events, we have determined that the actions by President Donald J. Trump violate our Acceptable Use Policy, which prohibits promotion or support of organizations, platforms or people that threaten or condone violence to further a cause,” a spokesperson said.
“As a result, we have terminated stores affiliated with President Trump.”
Ahiza García-Hodges and Sally Shin contributed.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
