SAN FRANCISCO | The Google-owned YouTube site announced Tuesday, on the eve of Joe Biden’s inauguration, that it was extending the suspension of incumbent President Donald Trump’s channel by one week.
“Given concerns about potential acts of violence, Donald J. Trump’s channel will not be able to upload new videos or live videos for a minimum additional period of seven days,” the group said in a message. transmitted to AFP.
“Comments will continue to be disabled indefinitely under the channel’s videos,” he added.
YouTube suspended for the first time on January 13 the White House tenant’s channel, which had 2.77 million subscribers, for seven days. The group then also deleted a video, believing that it violated its policy to combat incitement to violence.
The platform made the decision after more drastic measures from other social networks. Pressure from NGOs was mounting, with some even threatening Google to call for an advertising boycott, as they had done against Facebook this summer.
After the violent invasion of the United States Capitol by a crowd of Donald Trump supporters on January 6, the tech giants have chosen to enforce their rules much more strictly than in the past.
Facebook and Instagram temporarily and then indefinitely suspended the profile of the outgoing president while Twitter permanently deleted his account. Snapchat and Twitch reacted in a similar fashion.
Apple, Google and Amazon have banned the conservative social network Parler, popular with admirers of the Republican billionaire, from the Internet by excluding it from their hosting services.
All these companies absolutely want to avoid facilitating possible excesses and violence during the inauguration ceremony of Joe Biden, scheduled for 12:00 Wednesday (17:00 GMT).
Exceptional security measures were taken by authorities, and Airbnb canceled all scheduled reservations in Washington this week.