YouTube suspends Trump channel for week over violence fears

US President Donald Trump signs plaque on the border wall in Alamo, Texas on January 12, 2021. (Photo by MANDEL NGAN / AFP)

 

WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — Google-owned YouTube on Tuesday temporarily suspended President Donald Trump’s channel and removed a video for violating its policy against inciting violence, joining other social media platforms in banning his accounts after last week’s Capitol riot.

Trump’s access to the social media platforms he has used as a megaphone during his presidency has been largely cut off since a violent mob of his supporters stormed the Capitol in Washington DC last week.

Operators say the embittered leader could use his accounts to foment more unrest in the run-up to President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration.

“In light of concerns about the ongoing potential for violence, we removed new content uploaded to Donald J. Trump’s channel for violating our policies,” YouTube said in a statement.

The channel is now “temporarily prevented from uploading new content for a ‘minimum’ of 7 days,” the statement read.

The video-sharing platform also said it will be “indefinitely disabling comments” on Trump’s channel because of safety concerns.

(COMBO) This combination of file pictures created on January 07, 2021 shows US President Donald Trump (L) in Washington, DC on December 7, 2020, and Facebook Chairman and CEO Mark Zuckerberg in Washington, DC on October 23, 2019. – Facebook banned Trump from the platform “indefinitely” due to the US leader’s efforts to incite the violence in the US capital this week, chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said on January 7, 2021. Zuckerberg said on his Facebook page that the ban, which was announced Wednesday for 24 hours, was extended because of Trump’s “use of our platform to incite violent insurrection against a democratically elected government.” (Photos by SAUL LOEB and MANDEL NGAN / AFP)

Facebook last week suspended Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts following the violent invasion of the US Capitol, which temporarily disrupted the certification of Biden’s election victory.

In announcing the suspension last week, Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg said Trump used the platform to incite violent and was concerned he would continue to do so.

Twitter went a step further by deleting Trump’s account, depriving him of his favorite platform. It was already marking his tweets disputing the election outcome with warnings.

The company also deleted more than 70,000 accounts linked to the bizarre QAnon conspiracy theory, which claims, without any evidence, that Trump is waging a secret war against a global cabal of satanist liberals.

Trump also was hit with suspensions by services like Snapchat and Twitch.

The president’s YouTube account has amassed 2.77 million subscribers.

The home page of the Trump channel featured a month-old video of Trump casting doubt on the voting process in November’s presidential election, and had logged some 5.8 million views.

On Tuesday, an activist group called on YouTube to join other platforms in dumping Trump’s accounts, threatening an advertising boycott campaign.

© Agence France-Presse

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