After Twitter, Facebook, Google suspends Trump’s YouTube channel for minimum of seven days
President Trump’s YouTube channel has been suspended for a minimum of seven days after parent company Google deemed that his videos violated its policies.
FollowWashington DC: YouTube said on Tuesday that it suspended President Trump’s channel over concern about “ongoing potential for violence,” in the latest move by one of the large tech companies to limit the president online.
In a tweet on YouTube’s official account, the Google-owned video site said it had suspended Trump’s account after one of his recent videos violated its policy banning content that spreads misinformation about widespread election fraud. YouTube said he cannot upload new content to his channel, which had about 2.8 million subscribers, for at least seven days. YouTube also said it was disabling comments on his video indefinitely.
“After review, and in light of concerns about the ongoing potential for violence, we removed new content uploaded to Donald J. Trump’s channel for violating our policies. It now has its 1st strike & is temporarily prevented from uploading new content for a *minimum* of 7 days,” YouTube said in a statement.
The video side added, “Given the ongoing concerns about violence, we will also be indefinitely disabling comments on President Trump’s channel, as we’ve done to other channels where there are safety concerns found in the comments section.”
YouTube has a three strikes policy, and any user who receives a third strike is permanently banned.
Google’s decision comes days after Facebook and Twitter suspended his accounts. Google and Apple have removed the app Parler for failing to regulate content.
The moves have won praise from liberals and others, who said the actions were long overdue because Trump had used social media to spread falsehoods and incite violence. But critics have said the wholesale clampdown raises questions about how much power the tech companies have over online discourse.
