Facebook said it would block U.S. President Donald Trump’s accounts for at least the next two weeks and perhaps indefinitely with CEO Mark Zuckerberg …
Facebook said it would block U.S. President Donald Trump’s accounts for at least the next two weeks and perhaps indefinitely with CEO Mark Zuckerberg saying the risks of allowing him to use the platform were “simply too great.” The block by Facebook, which was joined by live-streaming platform Twitch and photo-sharing service Snap Inc, is the most significant sanction of the president by a major social media company. White House spokesman Judd Deere said “Big Tech” had censored the president at a critical time for the country. “Big Tech is out of control,” he said. Tech giants have been scrambling to crack down on the president’s baseless claims about the Nov.3 U.S. presidential election after hundreds of Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in unrest that resulted in four deaths. “The shocking events of the last 24 hours clearly demonstrate that President Donald Trump intends to use his remaining time in office to undermine the peaceful and lawful transition of power to his elected successor, Joe Biden,” Zuckerberg said in a Facebook post on Thursday. He said the action on Trump’s Facebook page, which has 35 million followers, would last at least until President-elect Joe Biden takes office on Jan.20 and would also apply to Facebook-owned Instagram. Zuckerberg had faced calls the day prior, including from some of his own staffers, to take more severe action against Trump’s account. At an all-hands meeting on Thursday, Zuckerberg told employees he considered it important political leaders “lead by example and make sure we put the nation first.” “What we’ve seen is that the president has been doing the opposite of that and instead fanning the flames of those who think they should turn to violence to overturn the election outcome,” he said, according to audio of the remarks heard by Reuters.
