Twitter Shares Sink After Banning President Trump from the Platform

Social media company Twitter saw its market cap dwindle this week after banning President Trump from its platform last Friday.

The President, who had almost 88 billion followers, had been permanently banned from Twitter after spouting conspiracy theories about voter fraud and election theft which led to thousands of his supporters attacking the Capitol last week.

Twitter’s stock price tumbled as much as 12% on Monday, erasing $5 billion from its market cap.

“After close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence,” Twitter had stated.

After being suspended, Trump later tweeted a statement from the @POTUS account before it appeared to also be deleted. Then the same statement was shared by the Trump campaign’s Twitter account before that entire account was also permanently barred.

“As we’ve said, using another account to try to evade a suspension is against our rules,” a Twitter spokesperson said in a statement.

Trump alleged that Twitter had “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. Twitter may be a private company, but without the government’s gift of Section 230 they would not exist for long.”

Facebook has also suspended Trump for at least the rest of his presidency. CEO Mark Zuckerberg argued that Trump aimed to use his account to undermine a peaceful transition of power and ignite more violence.

“We believe the risks of allowing the president to continue to use our service during this period are simply too great,” Mr. Zuckerberg wrote.

Both Facebook and its photo-sharing site Instagram would extend blocks, first put in place on Wednesday, on Mr. Trump’s ability to post “until the peaceful transition of power is complete.”

“While I’m pleased to see social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube take long-belated steps to address the president’s sustained misuse of their platforms to sow discord and violence, these isolated actions are both too late and not nearly enough,” said Senator Mark Warner, Democrat of Virginia.

Derrick Johnson, the president and chief executive of the N.A.A.C.P., commented, “The president’s social media accounts are a petri dish of disinformation, designed to divide and fuel violence at all costs.”

Disclaimer: We have no position in any of the companies mentioned and have not been compensated for this article.