Twitter on Wednesday locked the account of US President Donald Trump for 12 hours and threatened its permanent suspension, as tech giants scrambled to crack down on his baseless claims about the US presidential elections amid riots at the US Capitol.
The social media platform hid and required the removal of three of Trump's tweets "as a result of the unprecedented and ongoing violent situation in Washington, D.C.," after pro-Trump protesters stormed the US Capitol in an attempt to force Congress to overturn the election results.
One woman was shot and killed inside the Capitol building in the chaos.
If the tweets are not removed, the account would remain locked, Twitter said, meaning the president would be unable to tweet from @realDonaldTrump.
Facebook Inc and YouTube, owned by Alphabet's Google, also removed a video in which Trump continued to allege the presidential election was fraudulent even as he urged protesters, who had stormed the Capitol to force Congress to undo his loss to Democratic President-elect Joe Biden, to go home.
Facebook and YouTube did not take any further immediate action against his account.
Tech companies have been under pressure to police misinformation on their platforms around the US election, including through calls by users on Wednesday for major platforms to suspend Trump's accounts.
The president and his allies have continuously spread unsubstantiated claims of election fraud that have proliferated online. Trump on Wednesday blamed Vice President Mike Pence for lacking "courage" to pursue those claims in a tweet that Twitter later took down.
(With Reuters inputs)
