Twitter shares dropped over eleven percent on Monday after the social networking service permanently removed US President Donald Trump from its platform, following last week’s violent protests by his supporters on Capitol Hill.
The account that had been used by Trump since his first days in the Oval Office was followed by 88 million users and was the president’s preferred channel for commenting on topical events and communicating to his electorate.
“After close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them – specifically how they are being received and interpreted on and off Twitter – we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence,” Twitter said in a blog post last week.
The crucial decision followed the last week rally in support of Trump that ended in the storming of the Capitol as Congress was voting to confirm the results of the election. The riot resulted in the deaths of five people, including one police officer.
Shortly after the ban, Trump sent a tweet from a separate account @POTUS, which belongs to the office of the president and has about 33 million followers. However, the company removed his tweets. The accounts of former national security adviser Michael Flynn and Trump lawyer Sidney Powell were also removed from Twitter.
Meanwhile, Facebook and several minor platforms followed Twitter’s lead, banning Trump’s accounts on their platforms.
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