\u202a<\/a>@jack\u00a0and Zuck,\u201d\u00a0tweeted venture capitalist Chris Sacca, a well-known early Twitter investor. \u201cFor four years you\u2019ve rationalized this terror. Inciting violent treason is not a free speech exercise. If you work at those companies, it\u2019s on you too. Shut it down.\u201d<\/p>\nAlex Holmes, who is part of Twitter\u2019s Trust and Safety Council, also called on the platform to shut down Trump\u2019s accounts.\u00a0\u201cIt’s time Twitter deactivated Trump’s account for law & order!\u201d Holmes\u00a0tweeted.<\/p>\n
\u201cRealise President of United States but action needs to be taken when someone is inciting violence & threat to safety!\u201d<\/p>\n
In the past, Facebook and Twitter’s line in the sand was often drawn at the prospect of real-world harm. As a result of the high bar, the\u00a0companies let most of the president\u2019s statements stay online, which led to a pileup of misinformation, critics have said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you don\u2019t have the courage as the leader to tell people the truth, you end up getting people that believe the conspiracies and the false truths and you get a Capitol storm like today,\u201d said\u00a0Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois on CNN.<\/p>\n
As Wednesday’s chaos unfolded,\u00a0tech companies tried\u00a0to formulate their respective responses.<\/p>\n
A video that Trump posted asking rioters to “go home,” but also calling the election “fraudulent,” was limited on Twitter so users couldn’t like or comment on it, then blocked entirely.<\/p>\n
After labelling the same video, Facebook decided to remove it a few hours later. “This is an emergency situation and we are taking appropriate emergency measures,” a Facebook executive tweeted.<\/p>\n
On YouTube, some\u00a0pro-Trump outlets streaming the\u00a0events, such as Status Coup and PT News Network, were charging money on the site for users who wanted to contribute to the live discussion.<\/p>\n
YouTube says it removed livestreams intended to incite violence, and also removed Trump’s video for misleading information about the election results.<\/p>\n
But even the swiftest moves on Wednesday were perceived as too little,\u00a0too late. Trump\u00a0has long used social media to his advantage, stoking chaos by using the microphones offered by companies like Twitter and Facebook, and even the mainstream press.<\/p>\n
For years, Trump received special treatment on Twitter because of his status as a world leader. Those protections will end when he is no longer president, a Twitter spokesperson confirmed to Bloomberg\u00a0in November.<\/p>\n
\nRead: Amazon, Facebook among targets in FTC data practices review<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Twitter – the social media giant that for years gave Donald Trump wide latitude to rally supporters, spread misinformation and foment unrest – is on the brink of imposing a ban on the US president.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":402355,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9882],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-459410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-internet","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=459410"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459410\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":459416,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459410\/revisions\/459416"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/402355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=459410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=459410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=459410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}