US President Donald Trump, unarguably one of the most powerful leaders on the planet, has been temporarily locked out of his social media accounts. This comes after weeks of Trump insisting that he had won the Presidential polls and alleging voter fraud.
While legal efforts to prove the same have failed thus far, many of his supporters continue to rage. And on Wednesday, as the US Congress met to count and certify the electoral votes for President of the US, thousands of Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol. Thus far one person has been killed in an altercation with police officials.
President Trump's reaction to the protests has greatly irked critics. Even as he called for the protesters to remain non-violent and go home, the President's sympathy for the protesters has not gone down well. Nor has his reiteration of unproven claims of rigging.
"I know your pain. I know you’re hurt. We had an election that was stolen from us," he can be heard saying in a video message that has since been deleted for violating Twitter's rules. A total of three posts have been deleted from Trump's personal Twitter handle (the handle is used to disseminate official information too), and Twitter has now locked his account for 12 hours.
However, Twitter is not the only platform censoring the President. Both Facebook and Instagram have announced a temporary ban for the POTUS. And in the meantime, YouTube has removed a video posted from his account.
"We've assessed two policy violations against President Trump's Page which will result in a 24-hour feature block, meaning he will lose the ability to post on the platform during that time," read a post from the Facebook Newsroom on January 7 morning.
"We removed it because on balance we believe it contributes to rather than diminishes the risk of ongoing violence," explains Facebook executive Guy Rosen while talking about the deleted Trump video on the platform.
Instagram Head Adam Mosseri too issued a post stating that the platform would be taking the Facebook route. "We are locking President Trump’s Instagram account for 24 hours as well," he tweeted.
