Snapchat Has Stopped Promoting Donald Trump’s Account Due To “Racial Violence”
Interesting.
Entertainment
June 4, 2020

Trump image via Shutterstock / Snapchat image via Thomas Trutschel/ Photothek via Getty Images //

Trump and social media are a terrible combination…

In a move that no doubt the US President is fuming about, Snapchat has stopped promoting Donald Trump’s account, stating that it would not “not amplify voices who incite racial violence and injustice”. Snapchat’s parent company has also stated that “Racial violence and injustice have no place in our society and we stand together with all who seek peace, love, equality, and justice in America.”

To be clear, the account won’t be suspended or deleted, it just won’t feature in the Discover section, so only people who subscribe to or search for his account directly will be able to see his posts.

The decision came as Trump threatened protesters with “vicious dogs” and “ominous weapons” if they had breached the White House Fence.

Snapchat isn’t the only social media platform with a tough relationship with the President however, with Twitter adding fact-checking tags to some of his tweets last week, as well as hiding one of them for “glorifying violence”. It appears the Celebrity Apprentice host didn’t take too kindly to Twitter’s move, subsequently signing an executive order seeking to regulate all social media.

No doubt Facebook is feeling the heat now, with Mark Zuckerberg facing immense pressure from internal and external stakeholders to regard to intervening on Trump’s posts, however Zuckerberg has stressed that the company’s free speech principles mean that the posts will be left untouched.

Snapchat chief executive Evan Speigel has also spoken out on the civil unrest in America, issuing a memo to staff stating “Every minute we are silent in the face of evil and wrongdoing we are acting in support of evildoers,” he wrote.

“As for Snapchat, we simply cannot promote accounts in America that are linked to people who incite racial violence, whether they do so on or off our platform. Our Discover content platform is a curated platform, where we decide what we promote,”

Editors Pick