Trump slams tech giants after Facebook ban upheld

Former President Trump on Wednesday accused tech giants of stifling free speech after an independent oversight board upheld Facebook’s decision to ban him from the platform.

“What Facebook, Twitter, and Google have done is a total disgrace and an embarrassment to our Country. Free Speech has been taken away from the President of the United States because the Radical Left Lunatics are afraid of the truth, but the truth will come out anyway, bigger and stronger than ever before,” Trump said in a statement just hours after the decision was announced by Facebook’s Oversight Board.

“The People of our Country will not stand for it! These corrupt social media companies must pay a political price, and must never again be allowed to destroy and decimate our Electoral Process,” he continued.

The Oversight Board ruling Wednesday upheld Facebook’s decision to suspend Trump from the platform following the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

“The Board found that, in maintaining an unfounded narrative of electoral fraud and persistent calls to action, Mr. Trump created an environment where a serious risk of violence was possible,” it wrote in a statement.

At the same time, the panel found the indefinite suspension inappropriate and asked Facebook over the next six months to review the decision and develop a “proportionate response that is consistent with the rules that are applied to other users of its platform.”

Facebook executive Nick Clegg wrote in a subsequent blog post that Trump’s account would remain suspended and the company will “consider the board’s decision and determine an action that is clear and proportionate. In the meantime.”

Facebook indefinitely restricted Trump’s ability to publish content on the platform based on posts he made around Jan. 6, when a mob of his supporters, egged on by his false claims that he won the 2020 election, stormed the Capitol. The assault left five people dead.

Twitter has similarly banned Trump from posting on the platform, but that suspension is permanent.

The moves have curtailed the former president’s ability to speak directly to his supporters and the public, and he has been instead issuing written statements like the one panning tech companies on Wednesday.

—Updated at 11:51 a.m.