Twitter is apparently extremely serious about its suspension of former President Donald Trump.
The social media platform is so serious about the ban that on Wednesday it suspended a slew of new accounts set up to share posts from Trump’s recently launched website.
“As stated in our ban evasion policy, we’ll take enforcement action on accounts whose apparent intent is to replace or promote content affiliated with a suspended account,” said a Twitter spokesperson in a statement provided to Mashable.
The suspended accounts include @DJTDesk, @DJTrumpDesk, @DeskofDJT, and @DeskOfTrump1.
Donald Trump’s connection to the suspended accounts remains unclear.
A screenshot of an archived version of the @DJTDesk Twitter account from May 5. The account is now suspended.
Image: screenshot: mashable
According to the New York Post, Trump’s team was not involved in setting up the @DJTDesk account, the most popular of these suspended accounts before Twitter took it down. It had amassed a few thousand followers before it was suspended.
It’s unclear if the former President’s associates had any connection with the other suspended accounts or if they were also set up independently.
The removed accounts all appear to have been created over the past day for the sole purpose of disseminating posts from Trump’s new personal blog on Twitter. The site, “From the Desk of Donald J. Trump,” launched on May 4, one day before Facebook’s oversight board upheld the company’s decision to suspend the former President (albeit with a few major caveats).
“What Facebook, Twitter, and Google have done is a total disgrace and an embarrassment to our Country,” wrote Trump on his blog to give you a taste of what he’s posting. It appears to be an outlet for him to say what he would normally have tweeted prior to his removal from most major social platforms. His site currently provides no outlet for comments or other interactivity, aside from a few social sharing buttons.
Twitter is, however, still allowing users to share Trump’s blog posts. Links to his new “desk” website remain active on the social platform. The company may not want to repeat the controversy it sparked when it blocked links to a New York Post story about Hunter Biden’s alleged laptop. For now, Twitter appears to only be taking action against accounts set up for the sole purpose of distributing Trump’s blog content.
Trump’s favorite social media platform was, of course, Twitter. He used the service multiple times a day, where his posts often made international news, even before he became the President of the United States.
Twitter permanently suspended Trump following the tweets he made while a pro-Trump mob was violently storming the Capitol building in Washington, DC on Jan. 6. Two days later, on Jan. 8, the company suspended the @realDonaldTrump account. In a statement, Twitter said it decided to ban Trump “due to the risk of further incitement of violence.”
A quick Twitter search revealed other newly set up “Trump desk” accounts which have not yet been taken down by the company. So it seems Twitter may be quite busy tracking and removing these accounts for the foreseeable future.