Twitter permanently banned Donald Trump today. For a brief moment, he managed to tweet anyhow — not from @realDonaldTrump, his suspended account, but rather the official @POTUS account reserved for the current President of the United States, one that will be handed over to Joe Biden on January 20th.
His message, before it was deleted, cryptically suggested that he will “have a big announcement soon” and that he was looking “at the possibilities of building out our own platform.” Trump is currently deplatformed from most social media.
As I have been saying for a long time, Twitter has gone further and further in banning free speech, and tonight, Twitter employees have coordinated with the Democrats and the Radical Left in removing my account from their platform, to silence me — and YOU, the 75,000,000 great…
…patriots who voted for me. Twitter may be a private company, but without the government’s gift of Section 230 they would not exist for long. I predicted this would happen. We have been negotiating with various other sites, and will have a big announcement soon, while we…
…also look at the possibilities of building out our own platform in the near future. We will not be SILENCED! Twitter is not about FREE SPEECH. They are all about promoting a Radical Left platform where some of the most vicious people in the world are allowed to speak freely…
Twitter told The Verge earlier Friday that Trump would not be able to evade a ban by tweeting from a different account, and that his tweets might be deleted if he tweeted from a government account (like @POTUS). BuzzFeed has confirmed with Twitter that is exactly what happened.
If Trump tries to use a non-government account (say, if he created a new account), it would be permanently suspended “at first detection” according to Twitter.
Later on Friday evening, Trump tested that policy by tweeting the same messages from @TeamTrump, the Trump campaign’s official account. The messages remained active for a few minutes before the account was suspended.
The account also posted this picture shortly before it was suspended.
Twitter confirmed that it permanently suspended @TeamTrump in a statement to The Verge.
Gary Coby, listed on LinkedIn as the digital director for Trump’s 2020 campaign, has also had his account suspended after apparently offering it to White House social media director Dan Scavino for him to use and changing the display name and avatar to Trump’s.
Update January 8th, 10:29PM ET: Added Gary Coby’s suspension.