On January 7, after the events of January 6 in DC, President Donald Trump was suspended and removed from Twitter and Facebook. This sparked many opinions from both sides of the political spectrum. From the Liberal side, most cheered the removal of Donald Trump from Twitter. Trump was known to send late nights tweets on many events.
Civil rights groups said that Trump’s Twitter and Facebook bans were “long overdue” and that social media companies had excessively delayed in taking steps to counter political violence.
On the Republican side, the comments were mostly against the social media companies for censoring a sitting US President. The ban was also criticised by many US officials supportive of Trump, with Republican senator Ted Cruz stating the ban was “absurd and profoundly dangerous”, and former United States Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley likening the ban to political censorship in China.
Many world leader criticized the social media ban including former German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Mexican’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
A spokesman for German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that Twitter was correct to flag false statements in Trump’s posts, but that she viewed the permanent suspension as “problematic” due to her view that restrictions on the “right to freedom of opinion” should be decided by governments rather than private companies.
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador blasted the decision to ban Trump, saying that he favored prohibiting private companies from banning government officials and had directed officials to explore the possibility of creating a Mexican state-run social network
That wasn’t the only issues facing the tech companies.
Shortly after Twitter announced on January 7 that they were permanently suspending the account of President Trump, Google shared that they removed Parler, a conservative social media app, from their Play Store, saying in a statement that they were suspending the app until the developers committed to a moderation and enforcement policy that could handle objectionable content on the platform.
Amazon without warning pulled the Amazon Web Services for the Parler App for breaching Amazon’s terms of Service.
Apple later removed Parler from their App Store due to moderation issues but Parler later returned to the App Store after resolving the moderation issues.Â
