Facebook and YouTube have removed a video of Trump addressing supporters; Facebook says it risked adding to violence, YouTube says it violated election rules
YouTube also removed it, but Twitter left it up — As rioters stormed the US Capitol on Wednesday, Facebook removed a video …
The VergeMakena Kelly
Context & Ripple Effects
Facebook and YouTube had already acted together against a Trump video making COVID-19 claims, while Twitter temporarily restricted the campaign account over the same material in the earlier cross-platform COVID-19 takedown. The latest actions move the rationale from health misinformation to election-rule and violence concerns.
Twitter had labeled and then removed separate Trump posts over a risk-of-violence assessment just before this divergence, making its decision to retain this video a notable contrast with Facebook and YouTube.
First-order effects
Facebook and YouTube remove a distribution channel for the video, applying different stated policies—violence risk and election rules—to the same material.
Twitter becomes the major named platform still hosting the video, despite having taken enforcement action against other Trump posts tied to violence concerns.
Second-order effects
The split forces closer scrutiny of how consistently Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter apply their respective rules when identical political content is circulating across services.
Facebook and YouTube's aligned action reinforces that a single post can trigger multiple moderation frameworks, rather than requiring a platform to rely on one shared standard.
Third-order effects
If this pattern persists, platform governance will be shaped less by whether companies remove contentious political content than by which policy rationale each company uses and how quickly it acts.
Repeated coordinated removals by Facebook and YouTube, alongside differing Twitter decisions, point toward moderation as a competitive and reputational distinction among major platforms.
The trend: Major platforms are moving toward more active intervention in political content during acute safety and election-integrity events, while retaining distinct enforcement thresholds.
Google CEO @sundarpichai “Holding free and safe elections and resolving our differences peacefully are foundational to the functioning of democracy. ... The lawlessness and violence occurring on Capitol Hill today is the antithesis of democracy and we strongly condemn it. https:/…
BREAKING: Facebook blocking the President from posting for 24 hours. FB spokesman: “We've assessed two policy violations against President Trump's Page which will result in a 24-hour feature block, meaning he will lose the ability to post on the platform during that time.”
This is an emergency situation and we are taking appropriate emergency measures, including removing President Trump's video. We removed it because on balance we believe it contributes to rather than diminishes the risk of ongoing violence.
Facebook appears to be *finally* taking seriously what is happening inside Facebook Groups, the product that they have aggressively pushed for years despite mountains of evidence that they were being used to recruit and organize violent extremists https://about.fb.com/... https:/…
Facebook (including Instagram) are removing all photos/videos from the coup today. Again, showing they are perfectly able to act and remove content if they wanted to. It took an armed coup attempt to actually do anything. With only a fortnight of Trump remaining. https://twitter.…
Facebook is out with a statement explaining the decision to take down Trump's video and saying it will “take additional measures if necessary.” No indication they're taking any action at the page level yet. https://about.fb.com/...
Facebook's VP of integrity calls the Capitol riots “an emergency situation” and says Trump's video “contributes to rather than diminishes” risk of violence https://twitter.com/...
At this point Facebook is actually taking a (relatively) stronger approach to POTUS' posts than Twitter, which is the opposite of how it has gone in the past.
Please, if you see an interesting, useful or incriminating video or image on Facebook, please download it and archive the page using https://archive.is/ or https://archive.org/ before it is removed. https://twitter.com/...
BREAKING: Facebook has removed the president's video from its platform, @jolingkent reports. Pres. Trump began the video by reiterating the lie that the election “was stolen.” https://twitter.com/...
It's simply too dangerous to allow a Trump to dog-whistle & lie on these platforms after what happened today. Very simple solution: a 30-day pause for Trump. https://twitter.com/...
If I'm remembering correctly, this is just the second time ever that Facebook has removed a Trump post. (First time was in August when the platform removed a campaign video that included Covid-19 misinformation.) https://twitter.com/...
Facebook is removing visual evidence of the Capitol storming. Please download any photographs and videos you can find on Facebook that are not retained on other platforms! https://twitter.com/...
Does that include photos and video posted by reporters covering this attempted white supremacist coup? This policy seems wildly overly broad and vague, par for the course when social media platforms make moderation decisions based on news cycles https://twitter.com/...
NEW: Facebook declares ‘emergency situation’ and removes Trump video responding to, but not denouncing, mob violence at the Capitol https://www.theverge.com/...