A watchdog group has docked a boat outside of Jack Dorsey's San Francisco seaside mansion demanding that Twitter permanently ban President Trump
- A watchdog group has docked a boat outside of Jack Dorsey's San Francisco seaside home demanding that Twitter ban President Trump permanently after Wednesday's siege on the US Capitol.
- The 30-foot boat is outfitted with a banner that reads "Twitter: Ban Trump" and sits in the water with Dorsey's Sea Cliff mansion nestled in the cliff above.
- Internet platforms, including Twitter, have taken action against Trump since Wednesday after he continued to spread baseless election fraud claims while his supporters violently breached the Capitol walls, leaving five people dead.
- Twitter locked his account until he deleted certain tweets, though Trump is now once again posting on the platform. Facebook has banned Trump until at least January 20, when President-elect Joe Biden is sworn into office.
A consumer watchdog group has docked a boat outside Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey's seaside mansion in San Francisco demanding that his platform ban President Donald Trump following the siege on the US Capitol on Wednesday.
SumOfUs docked the 30-foot boat with a banner reading "Twitter: Ban Trump" on Friday as part of its campaign urging Twitter and Facebook to crack down on Trump online. A petition has also already been signed by 70,000 people demanding the platforms to permanently ban Trump.
"Donald Trump has a proven track record of utilizing social media to post and amplify harmful disinformation - from Covid lies, to baseless claims of election fraud, as well as his incitement of violence," said Emma Ruby-Sachs, executive director of SumOfUS, in a press release shared with Insider. "He is another egregious example of Big Tech's love affair with extremism and violence. They need to ban him for good and then fix the algorithms that grew this terrorist movement."
Twitter did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
Reports have shown that organizers of the siege congregated on far-right pockets of the internet leading up to January 6, including on Twitter, Facebook, Parler, and TheDonald, a website that was once a forum banned from Reddit last summer over hate speech violations, as NBC News reported a day before the attack.
Trump has spread unfounded claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him, claims that have stoked the anger of many of his supporters, including those that attended a rally at the US Capitol hours before some stormed into the federal building and vandalized its halls.
As the pro-Trump extremists made their way through the Capitol, Trump posted a video to Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube in which he told his followers to "go home, we love you, you're very special," while also falsely declaring that the election was fraudulent and that he won in a "landslide."
All three platforms reacted to the election misinformation: Facebook and YouTube removed the video, and Twitter initially attached a label explaining that users could not recirculate it "due to an increased risk of violence." Twitter, however, later removed the video as well and locked Trump's account, though the president now once again has access to it.
Facebook has since made the unprecedented move of banning Trump from posting until at least January 20, when President-elect Joe Biden is sworn into office. CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the action was taken because "the risks of allowing the President to continue to use our service during this period are simply too great."
During the siege, Twitter users were once again calling on Trump's account to be suspended, but he enjoys certain "world leader" protections as a US president. According to Twitter, what he says lies within the public interest, even if it violates guidelines. Dorsey, however, confirmed in November that he will lose those privileges come January 20.