Facebook blocks Trump from posting for 24 hours over policy violations
Donald Trump
Facebook barred US President Donald Trump from posting Wednesday over messages it said were promoting violence as his supporters stormed the US Capitol -- following a similar stand taken by Twitter.
The sanctions came after the president took to social media to issue a series of false claims -- including in a short video -- about the election he lost to Joe Biden having been stolen from him.
"We made the decision that on balance these posts contribute to, rather than diminish, the risk of ongoing violence," Facebook said.
The California-based social media giant said it was handing Trump "a 24-hour feature block" preventing him from posting.
Twitter also locked Trump's account for 12 hours and threatened its permanent suspension, as tech giants scrambled to crack down on his baseless claims about the US presidential election.
The social media platform hid and required the removal of three of Trump's tweets "as a result of the unprecedented and ongoing violent situation in Washington, D.C."
If the tweets are not removed, the account would remain locked, Twitter said, meaning the president would be unable to tweet from @realDonaldTrump.
Facebook Inc and YouTube, owned by Alphabet's Google, also removed a video in which Trump continued to allege the presidential election was fraudulent even as he urged protesters, who had stormed the Capitol to force Congress to undo his loss to Democratic President-elect Joe Biden, to go home.
Both Facebook and Twitter had originally added labels and measures to slow the video's spread.
Tech companies have been under pressure to police misinformation on their platforms around the US election, including through calls by users on Wednesday for major platforms to suspend Trump's accounts.
The president and his allies have continuously spread unsubstantiated claims of election fraud that have proliferated online. Trump on Wednesday blamed Vice President Mike Pence for lacking "courage" to pursue those claims in a tweet that Twitter later took down.