After reporting its quarterly earnings last night, Twitter’s CFO Ned Segal went on CNBC for an interview and was asked about the suspension of former president Donald Trump’s account. Segal basically said that Trump will never be reinstated on Twitter. Even if he does run for office again, more importantly, if he holds office again.
Of course, Segal being the executive he is, it wasn’t quite that short of an answer. Segal stated “the way our policies work, when you’re removed from the platform, you’re removed from the platform. Whether you’re a commentator, you’re a CFO, or you are a former or current public official. Remember our policies are designed to make sure that people are not inciting violence, and if anybody does that, we have to remove them from the service and our policies don’t allow people to come back.”
So, you won’t be seeing Donald Trump on Twitter ever again. Feel free to get out the world’s smallest violin.
Twitter wasn’t alone in banning Trump
After the insurrection on January 6, Donald Trump was banned from a slew of platforms. Twitter was one of the first to do a temporary ban for 24 hours. Then they permanently banned him a few days later, after he violated their terms once again.
Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Shopify, Stripe to name a few, all banned Trump in the days following the insurrection.
Interestingly, after he was banned from just about every social media platform out there, the spread of misinformation was cut in half. Seeing as he was the biggest spreader of misinformation, that is likely not a big surprise.
Twitter was Trump’s primary way to communicate with the American public, and now as a former president, he still does not have that method of communication. And has to rely on his press secretary to put out press releases.