Twitter Ban of Donald Trump Is Forever, Company Confirms

Todd Spangler
·3 min read
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Donald Trump was kicked off Twitter a month ago. And the social-networking company has confirmed that the former president is never coming back.

Twitter CFO Ned Segal, in an interview Wednesday on CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” said that even if Trump were to run for public office again, he would not be allowed back on the platform.

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“The way our policies work, when you’re removed from the platform, you’re removed from the platform, whether you’re a commentator, you’re a CFO, or you are a former or current public official,” Segal said on “Squawk Box.”

He added, “Remember, our policies are designed to make sure that people are not inciting violence, and if anybody does that, we have to remove them from the service and our policies don’t allow people to come back.”

On Jan. 8, Twitter finally banned Trump, citing the risk of “further incitement of violence” two days after the deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol by pro-Trump insurrectionists looking to overturn the 2020 election. After Trump posted a video on Twitter on Jan. 6 telling the mob, “We love you, you’re very special,” he later posted a tweet (which Twitter quickly removed) justifying the violence that said, “These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long… Remember this day forever!”

In the week after Trump was deplatformed by Twitter (and suspended by Facebook and others), misinformation about election fraud on social media dropped a whopping 73%, according to a Zignal Labs study.

Trump was impeached for the second time by the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives for his role in the U.S. Capitol attack, and he is currently the subject of an impeachment trial in the Senate (which is not expected to convict him given Republican opposition to the proceeding).

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, on the company’s Q4 earnings call, pre-empted analyst questions regarding the impact of the ban on Trump, who last had more than 88 million followers.

“We are a platform that is obviously much larger than any one topic or any one account,” Dorsey said. He noted that 80% of Twitter’s user base is outside the U.S. and that the platform has more than 50 accounts with over 25 million followers.

Through the end of January, Twitter said, growth in monetizable daily active users (mDAU) was “above the historical average from the last four years.” The company expects year-over-year daily user growth of 20% in Q1, implying a sequential net gain of 7 million mDAUs worldwide to more than 199 million.

Other internet platforms have booted Trump, either temporarily or permanently, following the Capitol riot. Facebook — which issued an indefinite ban on Trump — last month referred the question of whether he will ever be allowed back on Facebook or Instagram to the company’s recently created Oversight Board, and the social giant promises to abide by the board’s decisions.

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