Go woke, or go broke? Orwellian platform Twitter has now experienced the effects of that principle for the draconian anti-free speech measures it has wielded lately.
Yahoo! News reported that Twitter shares dive-bombed more “than 10% on Monday” following its decision to ban President Donald Trump from its site after the Capitol Hill riot Jan. 6. Specifically, the liberal outlet noted that “Shortly after market open Monday, the stock dropped as much as 12.3% to reach as low as $45.17 per share.”
Business Insider reported the real kicker: Twitter’s stock price loss erased a jaw-dropping “$5 billion from its market capitalization.” Ouch. [Emphasis added.]
“After close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence,” Twitter announced on Jan. 8. In its blog attempting to explain its actions, Twitter pointed to two Trump tweets as the basis for his suspension:
On January 8, 2021, President Donald J. Trump Tweeted: ‘The 75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me, AMERICA FIRST, and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!’ Shortly thereafter, the President Tweeted: ‘To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th.’
Twitter decided to insert its own meaning into the tweets. The platform alleged, “[T]hese two Tweets must be read in the context of broader events in the country and the ways in which the President’s statements can be mobilized by different audiences, including to incite violence, as well as in the context of the pattern of behavior from this account in recent weeks.”
India Today observed that following the Trump ban, Twitter waged a scorched earth campaign against any account Trump used to reach his millions of followers:
Hours after Twitter Inc permanently banned Donald Trump's account citing ‘risk of further incitement of violence’ following the US Capitol violence on Wednesday, the US President vowed that he and his support base would not be silenced. Banned from Twitter, Donald Trump tweeted from the account of 'Team Trump' which was also suspended following his statement.
Twitter’s overt leftist activism has been put on global display in the months leading up to the election and afterward. Recent research showed that the platform had censored Trump and his campaign a grand total of 625 times since May 31, 2018. By contrast, President-elect Joe Biden and his campaign haven’t been censored at all during that same time period.
A recent MRC survey of 1,000 actual voters showing the effects of Big Media and Big Tech’s censorship of negative Biden stories found that “36 percent of Biden voters were NOT aware of the evidence linking Joe Biden to corrupt financial dealings with China through his son Hunter.” Also, “Thirteen percent of these voters (or 4.6% of Biden’s total vote) say that had they known these facts, they would not have voted for the former Vice President.” The shift “away from Biden would have meant President Trump would have won the election with 289 electoral votes.”
Conservatives are under attack. Contact Twitter at (415) 222-9670 and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency and protections for exploited individuals abroad. If you have been censored, contact us at the Media Research Center contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.