Donald Trump’s popularity streak on social media seems to be experiencing some technical difficulties, as popular sites Twitch and Reddit ban Trump-related activity.
Video live streaming service Twitch suspended Trump’s official account for hateful conduct on the same day a subreddit belonging to a Trump-focused community was banned for hate speech, breaching the site’s code of conduct.
The social media reign of Donald Trump is on the decline, with popular sites Twitch and Reddit both suspending activity related to the president for hateful conduct.
Trump’s Twitch channel, created in 2019, has been temporarily suspended for breaching the site’s policy against hateful conduct. The offending stream – a rebroadcasting of a press conference for Trump’s presidential campaign in 2015 where he claims that Mexico was sending rapists to the US – has now been taken down.
A spokesperson for Twitch stated that politicians, like all other users, were expected to “adhere to our Terms of Service and Community Guidelines. We do not make exceptions for political or newsworthy content, and will take action on content reported to us that violates our rules.”
The announcement of the suspension arrived on the same day that Reddit, in a crackdown which saw 2,000 subreddits banned, vetoed an online community named r/The_Donald for promoting hate.
The subreddit, which is the largest pro-Trump page on Reddit, had previously been placed behind an ‘extra page’ as a warning for past behaviour deemed inappropriate, requiring users to click through to access the group. However, recent activity continued to undermine policy expectations on the site related to good faith, resulting in the ban.
Social media has spoken: Trump is officially cancelled.
