Social media companies are grappling with the reactions to the insurrection that broke out on Wednesday at the US Capitol. Despite plenty of time and warning, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube still seemed to be scrambling in their response to President Trump’s calls for an uprising in the wake of his election loss. In the aftermath of the Capitol violence, Twitter and Facebook are now implementing some of the toughest measures yet to limit Trump’s reach.
Twitter took the unprecedented action of locking Trump’s account for 12 hours — a period that will begin after Trump goes into his own account and takes down the tweets that violate its policies — and said it would suspend his account if the president, who has nearly 90 million followers on the platform, violated its rules on civic integrity or violent threats again. Following Twitter’s decision, Facebook announced that it would also implement a temporary ban and prevent Trump’s page from posting on the platform for 24 hours.
Beyond that, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube have also used the tools they’ve used in the past to handle sensitive events more proactively: adding labels, taking down posts that violate their
