President Donald Trump took to Twitter on Saturday to blast social media platforms for unfairly marginalizing conservative voices, days after Facebook banned several so-called…
President Donald Trump took to Twitter on Saturday to blast social media platforms for unfairly marginalizing conservative voices, days after Facebook banned several so-called extremist users from its platform.
The series of tweets and retweets by the president intensified his public feud with social media giants like Twitter and Facebook. Trump has claimed social media companies unfairly target conservative voices, but platforms like Facebook said the ban is routine.
This week Facebook permanently banned several so-called extremist figures, including InfoWars conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, white nationalist Paul Nehlan, alt-right figure Milo Yiannopoulos and Louis Farrakhan, the Nation of Islam leader who made numerous anti-Semitic statements for promoting violence, hate, or racism on the platform, according to media reports.
Trump tweeted on Friday afternoon that he was monitoring “censorship” by social media platforms, adding: “This is the United States of America -– and we have what’s known as freedom of speech! We are monitoring and watching, closely!!”
Over the next day, Trump retweeted complaints about Facebook’s recent social media ban from people like Paul Joseph Watson, who has helped promote conspiracy theories that 9/11 was an inside job and was banned from Facebook, and Lauren Southern, who claims that immigrants and Islam “screwed” her generation.
