Twitter Inc on Friday deleted new tweets posted by US President Donald Trump on official government account @POTUS and suspended the account of his presidential campaign, after booting his personal and campaign account off the platform permanently.
Trump tweeted, "We will not be SILENCED!" from the @POTUS government account, with 33.4 million followers. Twitter had permanently suspended the president's go-to megaphone, his @realDonaldTrump personal account, hours earlier.
The microblogging platform said that the @POTUS account will be kept active but will be monitored continuously. Within minutes of posting, Trump's tweets were also removed from that account, too.
The company said accounts used by Trump to try to get around the ban could face permanent suspension as well under its "ban evasion" policies.
"Twitter is not about FREE SPEECH," Trump wrote in the now-deleted tweets, adding that he is considering building his own social media platform in the near future.
Twitter shut down his @TeamTrump campaign account shortly after it sent out a tweet with a "statement from President Trump" accusing Twitter of "banning free speech" and coordinating with "the Democrats and the Radical Left" to silence him.
"As I have been saying for a long time, Twitter has gone further and further in banning free speech and tonight, Twitter employees have coordinated with the Democrats and the Radical Left in removing my account from their platform to silence me -- and YOU, the 75,000,000 great patriots who voted for me," Trump wrote from the official account.
The outgoing President wrote that he predicted that this would happen, adding that he would have a big announcement very soon as they look out at the possibility of looking at the possibility of "building out our own platform".
"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 very soon, while we also look at the possibility of building out our own platform in the future," he added.
The account shortly before that had pointed its 2.3 million followers to its account on Parler, which is popular with conservatives for its hands-off approach to content moderation.
Alphabet Inc's Google on Friday suspended the Parler social networking service from its app store, citing posts inciting violence and demanding "robust" content moderation from the app favored by many supporters of US President Donald Trump.
Apple Inc on Friday also gave the service 24 hours to submit a detailed moderation plan, pointing to participants using the service to coordinate Wednesday's siege of the US Capitol building.
Several other digital platforms, like Instagram, YouTube, Twitch etc have taken action against Trump and imposed restrictions on him using their platforms.
(With agency inputs)
