Twitter Shares Drop by 12 Percent After Company Banned Trump/Twitter, Facebook: $51 Billion Combined Market Value Erased

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I never was a twit anyway but hopefully more leave.

PS, we are on MEwe. ;-)

https://www.theepochtimes.com/twitter-s ... 52172.html

Twitter Shares Drop by 12 Percent After Company Banned Trump
BY ZACHARY STIEBER January 11, 2021 Updated: January 11, 2021biggersmaller Print
Shares of Twitter on Monday dropped 12 percent, after the company banned President Donald Trump and a slew of other conservatives.

Shares dropped after the market opened on Monday, reaching a low of $45.17. Twitter shares closed at $51.48 on Jan. 8.

Twitter said it removed Trump’s account on Friday because some of his recent posts were glorifying violence. The company echoed critics who attempted to connect Trump’s rhetoric with the breach of the U.S. Capitol.

Trump responded by accusing Twitter of coordinating “with the Democrats and the Radical Left in removing my account from their platform, to silence me—and YOU, the 75,000,000 great patriots who voted for me.”

Twitter also banned prominent users including lawyer Sidney Powell and Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn. Other users who weren’t banned left the platform, including radio hosts Mark Levin and Rush Limbaugh.

Among conservatives who are still on Twitter, some called for a shift to Parler, a Twitter alternative. Parler went offline Monday after Amazon Web Services refused to continue hosting its servers. Parler sued Amazon later Monday.

Gab, another Twitter competitor, has also seen skyrocketing growth.

Twitter, Facebook: $51 Billion Combined Market Value Erased Since Trump Ban
https://www.theepochtimes.com/twitter-f ... 56442.html

Twitter, Facebook: $51 Billion Combined Market Value Erased Since Trump Ban
BY ISABEL VAN BRUGEN January 14, 2021 Updated: January 14, 2021biggersmaller Print
Social media giants Facebook and Twitter have collectively seen $51.2 billion in combined market value wiped out over the last two trading sessions since they banned President Donald Trump from their platforms following the U.S. Capitol breach.

Large tech firms and a number of Democratic political figures have claimed Trump incited violence at the U.S. Capitol last week. The incident disrupted debates in both the House and Senate as lawmakers were forced to shelter in place while police and security attempted to seize back control.

Trump took to Twitter following the outbreak of violence to call on protesters to “go home in peace.” He denounced the violence as a “heinous attack” that “defiled the seat of American democracy” on Jan. 7. It is unclear who instigated the breach of the building.

Last week, Twitter first placed restrictions on a video the president posted, before temporarily suspending his account, an action followed closely by Facebook. Twitter two days later permanently suspended Trump’s account over two Twitter posts it cited as having violated its policies.

A large number of pro-Trump accounts were also deleted by Twitter and Facebook.

Epoch Times Photo
The suspended Twitter account of U.S. President Donald Trump appears on a laptop screen on Jan. 8, 2021. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
As users attempted to flee to Parler and other social media websites, Amazon Web Services suspended its service with Parler on Monday morning, triggering a lawsuit from the company hours later.

Most recently, Google’s YouTube removed new content from Trump’s account and suspended his channel for at least a week, saying that the channel violated its policies for “inciting violence.”

“After careful review, and in light of concerns about the ongoing potential for violence, we removed new content uploaded to the Donald J. Trump channel and issued a strike for violating our policies for inciting violence,” a YouTube spokesperson said in a statement to The Epoch Times.

“As a result, in accordance with our long-standing strikes system, the channel is now prevented from uploading new videos or livestreams for a minimum of seven days—which may be extended. We are also indefinitely disabling comments under videos on the channel, we’ve taken similar actions in the past for other cases involving safety concerns.”

Google did not have any further comment when asked about what aspects of the content on Trump’s channel had violated its policies.

The president has argued that companies like Google, Twitter, and Facebook will fail due to censorship.

Big Tech is “doing a horrible thing to our country. … And I believe it’s going to be a catastrophic mistake for them,” Trump said.

Jack Phillips and Mimi Nguyen Ly contributed to this report.

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https://www.theepochtimes.com/twitter-c ... 56165.html

sure he says this after his shares drop out.

Twitter CEO: Banning Trump Set Dangerous Precedent, Furthered Division
BY IVAN PENTCHOUKOV January 13, 2021 Updated: January 13, 2021biggersmaller Print
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said on Jan. 13 that the company’s decision to remove President Donald Trump was divisive and set a dangerous precedent.

“Having to take these actions fragment the public conversation. They divide us. They limit the potential for clarification, redemption, and learning. And sets a precedent I feel is dangerous: the power an individual or corporation has over a part of the global public conversation,” Dorsey wrote on Twitter.

Dorsey had not issued a statement since banning Trump on Jan. 8 and severing a direct line of communication between the commander in chief and some 88+ million of his followers.

Twitter permanently banned Trump from its platform on Jan. 8, two days after a mob broke into the U.S. Capitol during a joint session of Congress convened to vet and certify the results of the 2020 presidential election. The company alleged that Trump had incited the violence.

The move was met with criticism from world leaders, including the presidents of France and Germany. Trump accused Twitter of colluding with the Democrats. Facebook and YouTube have also removed Trump’s accounts.

“I do not celebrate or feel pride in our having to ban [President Trump] from Twitter, or how we got here. After a clear warning we’d take this action, we made a decision with the best information we had based on threats to physical safety both on and off Twitter. Was this correct?” Dorsey wrote on Twitter.

“I believe this was the right decision for Twitter. We faced an extraordinary and untenable circumstance, forcing us to focus all of our actions on public safety. Offline harm as a result of online speech is demonstrably real, and what drives our policy and enforcement above all.”

Dorsey noted that an ability for people to create alternatives for Twitter has acted as a check on its power to silence its users, but conceded that this is no longer the case given the shutdown of free speech social media app Parler. Apple, Google, and Amazon took de-platformed Parler and forced it offline.

“I do not believe this was coordinated. More likely: companies came to their own conclusions or were emboldened by the actions of others,” Dorsey wrote. “This moment in time might call for this dynamic, but over the long term, it will be destructive to the noble purpose and ideals of the open internet. A company making a business decision to moderate itself is different from a government removing access, yet can feel much the same.”

Dorsey ended the post by promoting the Bitcoin cryptocurrency and alluding to globalism.

“Everything we learn in this moment will better our effort, and push us to be what we are: one humanity working together,” the CEO wrote.

Follow Ivan on Twitter: @ivanpentchoukov