All posting rights blocked “indefinitely”

Jan 7, 2021 16:32 GMT  ·  By

Mark Zuckerberg has just announced that the Facebook and Instagram accounts of U.S. President Donald Trump have been suspended “indefinitely and for at least the next two weeks.”

The decision comes following the violent events at the Capitol building, with Facebook originally announcing a 24-hour feature block on the President’s accounts.

Zuckerberg says the social network wants to contribute to a smooth transition to the next U.S. president, and “the risks of allowing the President to continue to use our service during this period are simply too great.”

“Over the last several years, we have allowed President Trump to use our platform consistent with our own rules, at times removing content or labeling his posts when they violate our policies. We did this because we believe that the public has a right to the broadest possible access to political speech, even controversial speech. But the current context is now fundamentally different, involving use of our platform to incite violent insurrection against a democratically elected government,” Zuckerberg explains.

Notifications on posts delegitimizing election results

In addition, Facebook has also revealed the service has been actively removed content praising and supporting the storming of the U.S. Capitol building, calls to bring weapons to locations across the country, calls for protests that violate the curfew and attempt to restage violence.

Facebook and Instagram would also begin displaying a notification on all posts delegitimizing the election results to reveal Joe Biden has been elected President.

“As a part of this, we removed from Facebook and Instagram the recent video of President Trump speaking about the protests and his subsequent post about the election results. We made the decision that on balance these posts contribute to, rather than diminish, the risk of ongoing violence,” Facebook announced in a detailed post describing how the social network responded to actions happening lately in the United States.