Twitter will sustain its permanent ban against Donald Trump, even if he decides to run for office again. During an interview with CNBC Wednesday morning (Feb. 10), Twitter CFO Ned Segal said the former president will be treated just like everyone else who is prohibited from the social media platform.
“When you’re removed from the platform, you’re removed from the platform,” he said. “Our policies are designed to make sure that people are not inciting violence. He was removed when he was president and there’d be no difference for anybody who’s a public official once they’ve been removed from the service.”
The CFO also refuted claims that users left the social media site to flock to other platforms in protest of Trump’s ban. “We added 40 million people to our DAU [daily active user count] last year and five million last quarter,” Segal said. “In January, we added more DAU than the average of the last four Januarys, so hopefully that gives people a sense for the momentum we’ve got from all the hard work we’ve done on the service.”
Last month, Twitter became the first social media site to take permanent action against Trump after he was accused of inciting the deadly U.S. Capitol riots.
On Jan. 8, Twitter removed Trump’s account to prevent more violence from ensuing. The former president tweeted, “The 75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me, AMERICA FIRST, and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!”
Twitter then released a statement saying that they made it clear to Trump that any more violations would result in his account being permanently suspended. “We made it clear going back years that these accounts are not above our rules entirely and cannot use Twitter to incite violence, among other things. We will continue to be transparent around our policies and their enforcement,” the social media platform said in a statement.