Twitter is banning itself into oblivion. It’s actually insane to watch in real time. I hope they continue, to be honest.
More than 70,000 Twitter accounts linked with the far-right QAnon conspiracy movement have been banned from the platform following riots in the Capitol last week, the company announced Monday as part of a wider crackdown on conspiracies, misinformation and “ attempts to incite violence, organize attacks, and share deliberately misleading information about the election outcome” that has seen President Donald Trump and his high-profile supporters permanently blocked from the platform over fears he will use it to incite violence.
After years of pressure to crack down on misinformation, conspiracy and hate speech from Trump, platforms are now abandoning him in droves amid claims the president incited violence among his supporters Wednesday who went on to storm the Capitol. Of these, Twitter is far and away the most consequential and many prominent Trump supporters, such as Mike Flynn, Sidney Powell and Ron Watkins, have also been driven off the platform for sharing QAnon content. Twitter was Trump’s preferred way of engaging with the world around him and the president used the platform for everything from announcing policies and denouncing detractors to spreading hate, misinformation and lies. Trump’s communications channels are certainly narrowing — Facebook also banned the president and right wing app Parler has been practically run off the internet. A number of prominent European leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, have spoken out against Twitter’s ban on Trump, believing it to be a “problematic” move against free speech that should be the exclusive purview of governments and law, not private companies.
