StoryAfter four years of abuse, and a few days before the end of his mandate, the American president was cut off from Twitter, Facebook or YouTube. Story of a historic week in the balance of power between Silicon Valley and power.
After years of a continuous and massive presence on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, which partly built his political career and largely contributed to his accession to the presidency of the United States, Donald Trump saw his main accounts closed in a few days. one after the other. The violence in Washington, in a context where he continued to falsely claim that his presidential defeat to Joe Biden was the result of manipulation, precipitated the end of one of the most scrutinized digital influence in the world.
Silicon Valley finally decided, after years of debate, that it was no longer possible to leave Donald Trump his main channels of expression. Here’s how.
Wednesday January 6: the tweet too many
At the end of the afternoon, @realdonaldtrump stopped responding. As footage of pro-Trump protesters invading Washington’s Capitol Hill loops on news stations around the world, the President of the United States is strangely silent. A few hours earlier, he called directly on his supporters, during a speech, to march on Congress, where Joe Biden’s victory was to be formalized.
After posting a series of angry tweets, when the situation on Capitol Hill was already escalating, the president’s account fell silent: Twitter temporarily froze it. The account is not deleted, but Donald Trump no longer has access to it for twelve hours and is required to delete three messages.
This is the first time in the history of the platform that a sitting president has been temporarily suspended from Twitter. This event adds to a long list of firsts for Donald Trump: he was the first president to have his messages hidden, the first president to have his tweets accompanied by warnings, the first president to have threatened another country with nuclear war by Twitter – when he insulted the North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un…
In the process, Donald Trump also becomes the first current leader to see his Facebook account suspended: the CEO of the social network, Mark Zuckerberg, in turn announces, after the riots on the Capitol, that Donald Trump’s page would be blocked until to the transfer of power. He says he regrets that the president has chosen to “Justify rather than condemn” the violence of his supporters.
Thursday January 7: the “antifa plot”
Among Donald Trump’s supporters, the cause is heard: the “Big tech”, already suspected of being outrageously pro-democracy, censured the Republican president, even betrayed the nation by blocking his Twitter and Facebook accounts. For his most extremist supporters, a sordid conspiracy now prevents him from expressing himself, after having rigged the elections in favor of the Democrats.
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