This Friday, Twitter made the decision to place a permanent suspension on President Donald Trump’s twitter account. The app made the decision in response to the events on Capitol Hill, which took place this past Wednesday.

Twitter stated a glorification of violence, a violation of their community guidelines, as their primary reason for banning Trump from their platform. This comes after finding that Trump’s tweets over the past two weeks regarding election fraud have acted as a catalyst for the violence which took place in Washington, D.C. this past week.

Twitter claims to specifically ban the account, @realDonaldTrump, rather than Trump himself. However Twitter’s plans to enforce the policy show heavy enforcement to ensure Trump does not get around the ban, including prohibiting a third-party member utilizing any affiliated account on his behalf. 

Twitter has no plan to implement a suspension on the @POTUS and @WhiteHouse accounts, likely because those accounts will switch hands after President-elect Joseph Biden’s inauguration in the coming weeks.

Other platforms such as Instagram and Facebook have followed Twitter’s lead.

However unlike Twitter, these platforms have an indefinite ban that will expectedly be lifted once Trump’s term as President has elapsed and Biden has been inaugurated.

Twitter in particular has faced criticism in regard to their recent decision to ban Trump from their platform. With critics that range from conservative Senator Lindsey Graham to the American Civil Liberties Union, many feel discomforted by a social media platform censoring a major political figure.

Twitter has defended their actions by affirming that their suspension of Trump’s account serves to alleviate real-world harm and prevent further incidents of violence, not for political reasons.