YouTube, Twitter Against Trump

12/14/2020
Updated:
12/14/2020

Social media and big tech are taking aim at President Donald Trump. Twitter and YouTube are ramping up efforts to restrict his posts and advertisements online.

Twitter briefly restricted comments, likes, and forwarding options on a series of President Donald Trump’s posts. It’s the platform’s latest attempt to block election-related content it considers misinformation.

In one of three restricted posts, Trump responded to the Supreme Court’s rejection of a Texas lawsuit. The case challenges the election results in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, and asks the court to block electoral college votes from those states.

Trump called the dismissal “a great and disgraceful miscarriage of justice.”

In another post, Trump said he had “won the election in a landslide” if only “legal votes” were counted.

And in a separate post, he criticized Republican governors Brian Kemp of Georgia and Doug Ducey of Arizona saying the two allowed votes to be stolen from him.

Twitter attached a warning label to the posts, reading: “This claim about election fraud is disputed.”

The like and sharing functions were also disabled.

Twitter later backed down, restoring the “like” function and allowing users to “quote the tweets.”

But Twitter isn’t the only platform targeting the President. YouTube has also removed two new ads from the Trump campaign.