KEY POINTS
- YouTube has blocked Donald Trump's channel from uploading new content for a week, citing violations of its policies
- YouTube took down one video from the channel and disabled the comments section
- Facebook, Twitter and Instagram have already suspended or blocked his account
YouTube has temporarily suspended outgoing President Donald Trump's official channel for violating the platform's policies and pulled down a video following the riots that took place in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6.
The video-sharing platform confirmed on its official Twitter account Tuesday that Trump's channel has been banned from uploading new videos for at least a week. YouTube noted that the decision was made due to "concerns about the ongoing potential for violence."
"It now has its 1st strike & is temporarily prevented from uploading new content for a *minimum* of 7 days," the statement read.
Apart from that, YouTube has also disabled the comments section.
"Given the ongoing concerns about violence, we will also be indefinitely disabling comments on President Trump’s channel, as we’ve done to other channels where there are safety concerns found in the comments section," the platform added.
The video YouTube removed was uploaded to Trump's channel Tuesday and showed him saying that impeaching him over the Capitol riots would be "very dangerous for the USA," noted USA Today.
Though the president won't be able to share new content on his YouTube channel, people will still be able to view his previous videos. Trump has 2.77 million subscribers and more than 4,000 videos on his channel.
Social media welcomed the decison but also criticized YouTube for taking so long to announce the suspension.
"Thank you for doing that. YouTube is an appalling cesspool of misinformation and hate-filled propaganda, though, so please don't consider this step sufficient. Your company facilitates a lot of harm," @tomsirolimus said.
"With all due respect, because of Trump’s particularly-egregious behavior, I personally think that he ought to be permanently suspended from YouTube. I do not think that a seven-day ban sends a strong-enough message that hatred against others will not be tolerated," @Nickidewbear wrote.
"Excellent! Insurrectionists should not have a platform!" @Fitinmy70s added.
YouTube becomes the fourth massive social media platform to block Trump. Twitter has permanently suspended his personal account, while Facebook has blocked his account from posting anything until Jan. 20.
The video-sharing platform was under a lot of pressure to suspend Trump. Celebrities like Sacha Baron Cohen, Amy Schumer, Chelsea Handler and more had called on YouTube and CEO Susan Wojcicki to block his account as others have.
US President Donald Trump leaves for a trip to Texas, breaking his isolation in the White House Photo: AFP / Brendan Smialowski
