It is a historic decision.
Twitter executives permanently banned Donald Trump's account on Friday as the outgoing president continued to challenge the outcome of the US presidential election.
Hailed by some, denounced as "censorship" by others ... this choice of social network arouses many reactions.
We take stock.
Why was Donald Trump's account permanently banned?
Donald Trump's ban is the latest step in a long series of warnings addressed to the outgoing president in recent months.
Since the presidential election, the Republican has continued to challenge his defeat.
Through Twitter, he repeatedly encouraged his supporters to intervene on his behalf, breaking the platform's rules on respect for democratic processes.
At first, the social network headed by Jack Dorsey decided to hide with a note Donald Trump's tweets claiming the illegitimacy of the election results.
The billionaire's allegations could also be accompanied by didactic messages to explain, for example, the American electoral process.
471 Donald Trump publications were thus provided with a warning message.
Twitter took to the next level on Wednesday, after the violent clashes on Capitol Hill that resulted in the deaths of five people.
The social network then carried out a threat that it had been brandishing since June 2019 and suspended, for 12 hours, the Republican's account.
But on Thursday, company executives finally decided to reactivate the White House tenant's account.
This choice caused general surprise, because the current president is held in large part responsible for the riots which shocked the country.
Donald Trump then took the opportunity to post new tweets.
He first thanked "the 75 million great American Patriots who voted" for him and must not be "despised or treated unfairly, in any way!"
".
A message that could, according to the social network, make the apology of violence.
"We felt that they were likely to encourage and inspire people to reproduce the criminal acts that took place on the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021", indicates Twitter.
A few minutes later, Donald Trump posted a second tweet, explaining that he would not be “going to the January 20 nomination” of Joe Biden.
This time, the social network judged that this declaration could be "received by a certain number of its supporters as an additional confirmation that the election was not legitimate", specifying that the absence of the president could make this ceremony a "Safe target because he will not be present".
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These two tweets prompted the American company to permanently suspend Donald Trump's account on Friday evening.
Extremely rare, Twitter even detailed the reasons for its decision in a press release.
“After careful consideration of recent @realDonaldTrump tweets and the current context - including how they are interpreted […] - we have suspended the account indefinitely due to the risk of further incitement to violence”, the company was justified. .
After close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence.https: //t.co/CBpE1I6j8Y
- Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) January 8, 2021
How did Donald Trump react?
With more than 88 million subscribers on Twitter, Donald Trump had made the bird social network his favorite communication tool.
The platform has allowed him to make political announcements for years;
sometimes even before the publication of official statements;
to rant against the media or to insult his opponents.
This is why after the announcement of the definitive suspension of his account, Donald Trump immediately let his anger erupt… on this same social network.
"We will not be silenced", he wrote via the official Twitter account of the American presidency (POTUS).
“Twitter went even further in its muzzling of free speech and tonight Twitter employees coordinated with Democrats and the radical left to remove my account from their platform, to silence me - and YOU, the 75,000,000 great patriots who voted for me, ”he lambasted.
He spoke of reprisals against the network and the possible launch of his own platform in the near future, through a series of messages immediately deleted by Twitter.
"Using another account to avoid suspension is against our rules," responded a spokesperson for the company, which will also take steps "to mimic the use" of government accounts like @POTUS and @WhiteHouse.
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Why is this ad strongly criticized?
But this decision of the social network has been criticized a lot.
"We understand the desire to suspend (the president), but everyone should be concerned when these companies have the power to remove people from their platforms who have become indispensable for the expression of billions of people," commented Kate Ruane of the powerful American civil rights association ACLU.
In France, politicians are also numerous to have reacted.
This Saturday, Cedric O, secretary of state for digital, considered that the permanent suspension of the American head of state is justifiable, but "asks fundamental questions" on the "regulation of public debate".
“We need to invent a new form of democratic supervision,” he added.
The closure of Donald Trump's account by @Twitter, if it can be justified by some form of emergency prophylaxis, nonetheless raises fundamental questions.
Regulation of public debate by the main social networks with regard to their T & Cs alone ...
- Cédric O (@cedric_o) January 9, 2021
Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of rebellious France, judged for his part that "Trump's behavior cannot be used as a pretext for the GAFA to arrogate to themselves the power to control public debate", accusing "the Macron laws "To have" legalized this private censorship ".
While Marine Le Pen saw it as a "real democratic coup de force on the part of large private groups who now consider that they have more power, and this is probably true, than a State".
Conversely, other personalities felt that this "hypocritical" decision came much too late when the Republican is on the verge of completing his presidency.
"When Twitter and others act now, it's like all these senior government officials who resign a few days from the end (of the mandate): it's too little, too late", regretted Angelo Carusone, for example, president of the NGO Media Matters for America.
“If they had acted sooner, the horrific events of Wednesday could have been avoided.
".
For several weeks, calls from personalities and organizations, from Michelle Obama to the union of Google employees, had indeed multiplied to ban the billionaire from social networks.
Will the outgoing president still be able to communicate?
Now blocked from Twitter, but also from Facebook, Snapchat, YouTube or even Twitch, the outgoing president will have only limited options to express himself on social networks.
To communicate with his supporters and his hard core, the entire Trump family had switched in 2018 to the social network Parler, "guaranteed without censorship".
Its campaign team, the "@Team Trump", has 2.5 million subscribers.
But Google also banned the conservative social network from its download catalog on Friday.
Many supporters of the outgoing president fear that he can no longer speak, qualifying the decision of the American firm as "censorship".
However, several American personalities wished to recall that Twitter is not the main channel of communication of the Head of State, and that it can still be expressed through press releases published by the White House.
Hi, the president can release statements via the White House anytime he wants.
Just FYI.
- Abby D. Phillip (@abbydphillip) January 8, 2021
Before him, it was also the preferred communication tool by American presidents.
The risk is now that supporters of Donald Trump migrate to other alternative platforms such as the "Russian Facebook" VKontact, RuTube, Libry, Odysee, Me We, Rumbler ... where moderation is much less important, or even non-existent, analyzes Julien Giry , senior lecturer in political science and author of a thesis on conspiracy in American culture.
"Even if the cleaning is done on the
mainstream
networks
, its messages will find an echo on the alternative platforms which are in the process of generalization", explains the specialist.
“Regulation does not kill the problem, it only shifts it”.
Is this a first?
The president of a state had never, until then, been the subject of such virtual sanctions.
But other organizations or public figures have already been banned from social networks.
Platform algorithms are programmed to suppress terrorist organizations and hate speech carriers online.
In France, far-right figures, such as Hervé Ryssen or Alain Soral, have already been excluded from Facebook or YouTube.
The Equality and Reconciliation page and the Génération Identitaire organization were also moderated.
This Saturday, Twitter deleted a message from Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei saying it was impossible to trust US and UK vaccines against the novel coronavirus.
And with the proliferation of false information on vaccination and the recent violence in the Capitol, social networks, often criticized for their laxity, should further tighten their conditions of use.
Whether their Internet users are political figures or ordinary citizens.