As if the troubles of President Donald Trump is not enough, Google, the owner of Youtube has Tuesday suspended him from uploading video for seven days.
YouTube broke the news on Tuesday that it had suspended President Trump’s channel over concern about “ongoing potential for violence,” the latest move by one of the large technology companies to limit the president online.
In a post on YouTube’s official Twitter account, the Google-owned video site said it had suspended Mr Trump’s account after one of his recent videos violated its policy for inciting violence.
That meant Mr Trump would not be able to upload new content to his channel, which had about 2.8 million subscribers, for at least seven days. YouTube also said it was disabling all comments on his channel indefinitely.
1/ After review, and in light of concerns about the ongoing potential for violence, we removed new content uploaded to Donald J. Trump’s channel for violating our policies. It now has its 1st strike & is temporarily prevented from uploading new content for a *minimum* of 7 days.
— YouTubeInsider (@YouTubeInsider) January 13, 2021
Many tech companies have moved to curtail Mr Trump online since a violent mob of his supporters, urged on by the president, stormed the Capitol last week. In the aftermath, Facebook suspended the president from Instagram and its core social network through at least until the end of his term. Twitter followed by permanently banning Mr Trump’s account from its service, depriving him of his favourite social media platform, where he had more than 88 million followers. Other sites, such as Snapchat, Reddit and Twitch, clamped down on Mr Trump.
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The moves have won praise from liberals and others who said the actions were long overdue because Mr Trump had used the sites to spread falsehoods and incite violence.
But conservatives have said that the tech companies censored Mr Trump and suppressed right-wing voices, raising questions about how much power the tech companies have over online discourse.
The video that prompted the YouTube suspension came from Mr. Trump’s remarks on Wednesday before a trip to Texas to visit a partly completed portion of his long-promised wall along the Mexican border.
In his first address to reporters since last week’s events, Mr Trump said that a speech he had made at a rally before the riots at the Capitol was “totally appropriate” and that an effort by Congress to impeach and convict him was “causing tremendous anger.”
The New York Times
