U.S. President Donald Trump threatened action against Big Tech following his ban on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, major social networking sites.
Trump’s accounts were suspended on platforms following his tweets last Wednesday.
In a statement, Twitter said that his posts could be “mobilized by various audiences, including to incite violence.”
Twitter also decided that its “Glorification of Violence Policy” was in breach of the language.
Read more: Twitter, Facebook to hand over @POTUS account to Biden on January 20
Trump said, in a vague statement to reporters, “I think Big Tech is doing a terrible thing for our country and for our nation. And I assume this would be a terrible mistake for them. It’s contentious and divisive.”
According to a Reuters report, he indicated at a “counter move” to Big Tech’s “actions” without disclosing specifics of the counter move or the precise actions. He promised a “big announcement soon” as well.
This isn’t the first time that Trump has brought Big Tech to the task. To wit:
- He blocked a security bill of $740 billion because the bill did not repeal Section 230, a law protecting social media sites from responsibility for user-generated content.
- He signed an executive order requiring the review of Section 230 of the Federal Communications Commission
- He demanded sanctions for social media sites that he claimed prohibited users or restricted their expression on the basis of their political beliefs.
Parler Files Lawsuit Against Amazon
Meanwhile, in Seattle federal court, social network Parler has threatened legal action against Amazon, filing an 18-page lawsuit. After the platform took no action against the threats of violence posted on the platform prior to Wednesday’s riot at the Capitol, Amazon removed Parler from Amazon Web Services, its cloud-based server.
The social network Parler stated that the ban was to narrow down Amazon’s competitors from the market.
The filing of the complaint did not impact the stock price of Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN), which was up 0.21 percent. However, Facebook stock (NASDAQ: FB) was down 2.24 percent, Alphabet Inc, Google’s parent company, suffered a 1.07 percent decline and Twitter (NYSE: TWTR) was down 2.37 percent as well.
