President Donald Trump has been restricted from his Facebook and Instagram accounts until president-elect, Joe Biden is inaugurated.
Facebook Co-Founder, Mark Zuckerberg, made the announcement in a statement on Thursday, with the ban set to be lifted after his tenure as president ends on January 20, 2020.
The two-week ban comes after a series of inciting and unverified comments over an alleged rigging of the November elections which he lost.
Recall that Jack Dorsey’s Twitter was forced to suspend the president’s account on Wednesday for at least 12 hours over unverified posts during which some could have been said to have incited rioters who invaded the Capitol Hill building to disrupt the US Congress’ certification of Biden’s 306-232 Electoral College victory.
At least four people died, including a white woman who was shot inside the Capitol, during what was perceived as a domestic terror attack led verbally by the president after staging a rally in Washington DC.
Although Trump promised, according to a video from the rally, his protesters he would be physically present in the march to the Capitol, the president was nowhere to be found during the chaos, only to be seen on social media with some questionable posts.
Reacting to the violence, Zuckerburg said: “Following the certification of the election results by Congress, the priority for the whole country must now be to ensure that the remaining 13 days and the days after inauguration pass peacefully and in accordance with established democratic norms.
“Over the last several years, we have allowed President Trump to use our platform consistent with our own rules, at times removing content or labelling his posts when they violate our policies. We did this because we believe that the public has a right to the broadest possible access to political speech, even controversial speech. But the current context is now fundamentally different, involving use of our platform to incite violent insurrection against a democratically elected government.
“We believe the risks of allowing the President to continue to use our service during this period are simply too great. Therefore, we are extending the block we have placed on his Facebook and Instagram accounts indefinitely and for at least the next two weeks until the peaceful transition of power is complete,” the statement read partly.
Meanwhile, Trump has since promised a peaceful transition but stated clearly that he disagrees with the outcome of the election.
