USA / YouTube suspends Trump's channel for a week citing policy violation

Washington: Online video-sharing platform YouTube on Wednesday announced that it had suspended United States President Donald Trump’s channel over concern about “ongoing potential for violence”. This comes as the latest move by one of the large tech companies to limit the president online following the suit of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

The announcement was made by YouTube’s official Twitter account, where it wrote that it had suspended President Trump’s account after one of his recent videos violated its policy banning content that spreads misinformation claiming widespread election fraud. The Google-owned video site further said that the outgoing President would not be able to upload new content to his channel, which had about 2.8 million subscribers, for at least seven days. It also said that it was disabling comments on his video indefinitely.

“After review, and in light of concerns about the ongoing potential for violence, we removed new content uploaded to Donald J. Trump’s channel for violating our policies. It now has its 1st strike and is temporarily prevented from uploading new content for a *minimum* of 7 days. Given the ongoing concerns about violence, we will also be indefinitely disabling comments on President Trump’s channel, as we’ve done to other channels where there are safety concerns found in the comments section,” read the tweets by Youtube.

Earlier, last week, social media giant Twitter announced its ban on President Trump from its platform indefinitely, citing “risk of further incitement of violence”. The Twitter ban was announced two days after a pro-Trump mob stormed the US Capitol, hoping to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s election victory.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg also said that President Donald Trump will be suspended from Facebook and Instagram indefinitely and at least until the end of his time in office.