YouTube has suspended President Donald Trump’s channel from uploading new videos to the platform for at least a week over concerns about the “ongoing potential for violence,” the company announced in a tweet late on Tuesday evening.
YouTube, a subsidiary of Google, said it suspended the president’s channel, which has over 2.7 million subscribers, due to content uploaded on Tuesday that violated the platform’s policies. A YouTube spokesperson clarified that the company had removed content for violating the company’s policies for inciting violence. The content included comments Trump made from a Tuesday morning press conference at San Juan in South Texas where he had gone to tour the construction of the border wall.
YouTube has also indefinitely disabled comments on Trump’s channel over “safety concerns found in the comments section.”
In a statement issued to BuzzFeed News, a YouTube spokesperson said: “After careful review, and in light of concerns about the ongoing potential for violence, we removed new content uploaded to the Donald J. Trump channel and issued a strike for violating our policies for inciting violence. As a result, in accordance with our long-standing strikes system, the channel is now prevented from uploading new videos or livestreams for a minimum of seven days—which may be extended. We are also indefinitely disabling comments under videos on the channel, we’ve taken similar actions in the past for other cases involving safety concerns.”
The move makes YouTube the latest in a string of technology platforms that have limited Donald Trump online after he used his Twitter account to incite an insurrection on Capitol Hill last week that led to several deaths.
In the wake of the riot, Twitter permanently suspended the president, while Facebook and Instagram banned him from posting to the platform for at least two weeks. Twitch and Snap also suspended him, Shopify banned his online stores, and Stripe kicked his campaign off its payment platform.
Tech giants also acted against the anything-goes social network Parler after the storming of the Capitol. Last week, Apple and Google kicked Parler off their app stores, and on Monday, Amazon banned the network from using the company’s hosting services, effectively taking it offline. Parler had been used to allegedly plan the attack on the Capitol and in recent days was brimming with violent rhetoric.
After Trump was deplatformed by most major tech companies, critics had called upon YouTube to suspend him, as well.
