Facebook has confirmed there are no plans in reinstating Donald Trump’s account shortly after the President’s Twitter account was permanently suspended from the platform.
As Sheryl Sandberg, the Facebook COO, expressed, she is “glad” that Trump has been slapped with “an indefinite ban” from Facebook.
“In this moment, the risk to our democracy was too big that we felt we had to take the unprecedented step of what is an indefinite ban, and I’m glad we did,” she said.
While Sandberg confirmed that Facebook promised to keep Trump off Facebook at least until the transition of power is complete, she insisted they currently have no plans of reinstating his account.
“Even a president is not above the policies we have,” Sandberg said during Reuters NEXT conference.
Facebook first blocked the President’s account on Wednesday following the deadly riot at the US Capitol. On the following day, the temporary ban was made permanent.
Speaking of the decision to get rid of Trump’s presence from Facebook, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said:
“We believe the risks of allowing the President to continue to use our service during this period are simply too great.
“Therefore, we are extending the block we have placed on his Facebook and Instagram accounts indefinitely and for at least the next two weeks until the peaceful transition of power is complete.”
Meanwhile, amid a massive crackdown on violent content, Twitter removed over 70,000 QAnon-related accounts from its platform. Twitter, too, permanently suspended Trump’s personal account.
As the social media giant announced in a blog post by Twitter Safety, they have taken steps to counter attempts to “incite violence, organize attacks, and share deliberately misleading information about the election outcome.”
According to Twitter, 70,000 QAnon-related accounts have been suspended from the platform, whereas a large number of accounts belonged to people who were in charge of running multiple accounts.
“We’ve been clear that we will take strong enforcement action on behavior that has the potential to lead to offline harm.
“Given the violent events in Washington, DC, and increased risk of harm, we began permanently suspending thousands of accounts that were primarily dedicated to sharing QAnon content on Friday afternoon,” the company revealed in the blog post.
“Many of the individuals impacted by this updated enforcement action held multiple accounts, driving up the total number of accounts impacted.
“Since Friday, more than 70,000 accounts have been suspended as a result of our efforts, with many instances of a single individual operating numerous accounts.
“These accounts were engaged in sharing harmful QAnon-associated content at scale and were primarily dedicated to the propagation of this conspiracy theory across the service.”
While critics have suggested that tech giants are cracking down on ‘free speech’, major social media networks, including Facebook and Twitter, have recently begun taking serious measures in combating violent content and false information.
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Replaced!