Twitter has banned President Donald Trump’s official campaign account and the campaign’s Digital Director, Gary Coby. The platform permanently banned Trump earlier on Friday evening.
Twitter’s suspension of accounts essentially censors the historical record by removing all the accounts’ tweets from being publicly accessed.
The Trump campaign’s Twitter profile published a statement from Trump on Friday in which the president said he would build his own social media platform. Twitter immediately banned the profile.
Coby changed his account’s profile picture to one of Trump and its screen name to Donald J. Trump.
Twitter claimed its censorship of Trump’s campaign and Coby was a function of its “ban evasion policy.” The Twitter spokesperson told the Hill, “As stated in our ban evasion policy, if it is clear that another account is being used for the purposes of evading a ban, it is also subject to suspension.”
“If we have a reason to believe [Trump] is using accounts to evade the suspension, the accounts could face permanent suspension under our ban evasion policies,” the spokesperson added.
Twitter described its political censorship as motivated by an intent to prevent “real-world harm.”
“Attempts by Trump to circumvent the ban using the @POTUS or @WhiteHouse handles will be removed,” declared Twitter. “For government accounts, such as @POTUS and @WhiteHouse, we will not suspend those accounts but will take action to limit their use However, these accounts will be transitioned over to the new administration in due course and will not be suspended by Twitter unless absolutely necessary to alleviate real-world harm.”