Twitter permanently placed a ban on Donald Trump’s account on Friday. The ban comes after the microblogging site detected that the US president has been going against its policies.
For a brief moment, however, President Trump managed to tweet, not from his suspended personal account – @realDonaldTrump – but from the official @POTUS account reserved for the sitting President of the United States; which will be handed over to Joe Biden on January 20th.
In Donald Trump’s message, before it was deleted, he cryptically suggested that he will “have a big announcement soon” and that he was looking at “the possibilities of building out our own platform.”
Donald Trump is currently suspended from most social media platforms.
The outgoing US president stated in the message that Twitter has gone further and further in banning free speech.
He also alleged that Twitter employees have worked with the Democrats and the Radical Left to remove his account from their platform.
President Trump alleged that the suspension is a move by the platforms to silence him and “YOU, the 75,000,000 great patriots who voted for me.”
“Twitter may be a private company, but without the government’s gift of Section 230 they would not exist for long. I predicted this would happen. We have been negotiating with various other sites, and will have a big announcement soon, while we…”
“…also look at the possibilities of building out our own platform in the near future. We will not be SILENCED! Twitter is not about FREE SPEECH. They are all about promoting a Radical Left platform where some of the most vicious people in the world are allowed to speak freely…”
According to a report by The Verge, Twitter said that Trump would not be able to evade a ban by tweeting from a different account, and that his tweets might be deleted if he tweeted from a government account like @POTUS.
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Twitter also added that if Trump tries to create and use a new account, it would be permanently suspended at first detection.
On Friday evening, Trump tested Twitter’s policy by tweeting the same messages from the account @TeamTrump – which is Trump campaign’s official account.
The messages remained active for a few minutes before the account was suspended.
The Twitter account of Gary Coby, who is listed on LinkedIn as the digital director for Trump’s 2020 campaign, has also been suspended.
The suspension comes after he apparently offered it to White House social media director Dan Scavino for him to use. He also had the display name and avatar changed to Trump’s.