Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador condemned the social media Masters of the Universe for censoring the accounts of President Donald Trump.
“I don’t like anybody being censored or taking away from the the right to post a message on Twitter or Face(book). I don’t agree with that, I don’t accept that,” said López Obrador, according to a report by the Associated Press on Thursday.
“How can you censor someone: ‘Let’s see, I, as the judge of the Holy Inquisition, will punish you because I think what you’re saying is harmful,'” added Mexico’s president. “Where is the law, where is the regulation, what are the norms? This is an issue of government, this is not an issue for private companies.”
Presidential spokesman Jesús Ramírez added that “Facebook’s decision to silence the current leader of the United States calls for a debate on freedom of expression, the free exchange of information on the web, democracy and the role of the companies that administer (social) networks.”
López Obrador shared these sentiments on Thursday, after Mark Zuckerberg blacklisted President Trump from the Facebook and Instagram platforms “indefinitely,” following the events on Capitol Hill the day prior.
In a similar move on Thursday, Twitter had deleted the president’s tweets, suspended his account for 12 hours, and threatened to ban him permanently from the platform.
On Friday, however, Twitter permanently banned President Trump from its platform, claiming that the president’s tweets posed a “risk of further incitement of violence.”
Following Twitter banning the President of the United States, Google removed social media platform Parler from its Play Store for Android devices and said that the app will remain suspended until it implements “robust” moderation policies that crack down on free speech.
Concurrently, Apple has threatened to ban Parler from its app store unless it cracks down on constitutionally protected speech that Apple doesn’t approve of — a move that would effectively exclude the app from all Apple smartphones.
You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Facebook and Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, on Parler at @alana, and on Instagram.
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