In the last few weeks of his presidency, Donald Trump took a number of well-deserved hits. Chief among them was the repeated swipe at his ego that was being banned from any social media platform on which he could conceivably be heard. Twitch, one of the platforms that initially bucked the then-president, has now enforced their ban on him permanently, just as he leaves office.
In a statement to IGN, Twitch states that they “indefinitely suspended President Trump’s Twitch channel due to the ongoing risk of further incitement of violence.”
The statement continues, saying that “The President’s statements continue to be interpreted as calls to action, and we are taking this action to remove the potential for harm to our community and the general public.”
It’s worth noting that the kind of ban Twitch has enforced here cannot be appealed, meaning that Trump can’t even try to dispute it if he wanted to. He’s gone from the platform for good.
This indefinite expansion on Trump’s existing ban is only one of the latest developments in the saga that has been the end of Trump’s presidency. Following the riots in the Capitol, which Trump is largely assumed to be responsible for inciting, social media sites that had been way too slow and reticent to knock him from their platforms finally found the ban button hovering over his countless profiles. The bans came hard and fast from there on out.
Facebook and Twitter were perhaps the most notable among the bans. TikTok even got its revenge on Trump by banning him. Accounts and platforms associated with Trump got banned too, including a number of people in his administration broadcasting his messages from the shadow realm and his subreddit r/TheDonald. Even Parler, a conservative take on Twitter that was largely used by QAnon to spread conspiracy theories, got taken down entirely from storefronts and then kicked offline after the riots two weeks ago.
Now it at least appears like social media platforms are beginning to consider the ramifications of giving a fascist a platform. Or what’s more likely is they recognize their time capitalizing on one has come to a close and are now kicking him to the curb. Whatever it may be, good riddance.