Vox Sentences - A president without a platform

President Trump is removed from most major social media platforms; 2020 was another bad year for the climate crisis.

Tonight's Sentences was written by Benjamin Rosenberg.

• Following Wednesday’s insurrection at the US Capitol, social media platforms took unprecedented steps, with nearly all of them banning President Donald Trump. Twitter, the president’s social network of choice, took the step on Friday evening. [Recode / Shirin Ghaffary]
• In 2015, as his first presidential campaign was gaining steam, Trump christened himself “the Ernest Hemingway of 140 characters.” He has used Twitter for myriad things during his presidency, from attacking opponents to announcing policy. [Politico / Alex Isenstadt]
• Trump announced the firings of several top officials via tweet without first letting them know, including then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. The news that the president and first lady Melania Trump had tested positive for the coronavirus was also first posted on Trump’s Twitter. [AP / Aamer Madhani and Jill Colvin]
• While Twitter may have been Trump’s favorite platform, it was far from the only one to give him the boot. Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitch also took down his accounts, with Snapchat and Twitch joining Twitter in doing so permanently. [Vox / Cameron Peters]
• Facebook and Instagram, which Facebook also owns, have suspended Trump through at least the end of his term on January 20. YouTube strengthened its policy against misinformation, making it easier to identify false election claims as such. [NYT / Mike Isaac and Kate Conger]
• The president is not known to have a presence on Reddit or TikTok, but Reddit banned the subgroup r/DonaldTrump, and TikTok — which Trump threatened to ban last year — is redirecting hashtags related to Wednesday’s riot. [Axios / Sara Fischer and Ashley Gold]
• Much of the discourse that led to the insurrection occurred on Parler, an alternative to Twitter favored by conservatives. But after Wednesday’s events, Parler was deleted from the Apple App Store and Google Play Store, and Amazon removed it removed from its computing services. [NYT / Jack Nicas and Davey Alba]
• Parler had become a favorite platform for Trump supporters frustrated with what they saw as censorship by Facebook and Twitter. Users followed each other and posted messages called “Parleys” — similar to tweets. The site's approach to free speech led to a plethora of false claims. [NPR / Shannon Bond]
• Right-wing media played a huge role in amplifying the messages that led to the riot at the Capitol. Fox News anchor Sean Hannity, along with extreme right outlets One America News and Newsmax, broadcast Trump’s baseless election fraud conspiracy theories to millions of viewers. [Vox / Sean Illing]