Twitter’s Stock Sinks 7% After Trump Ban
Twitter’s stock price dropped 7% an hour into trading on Monday morning, the first trading day since the company announced late Friday that it was permanently banning President Trump from its service.
The drop pushed Twitter’s stock below $48 per share, and at one point during early-morning trading, Twitter touched as low as $45.15 per share before rebounding a bit.
Facebook’s share price was down 2.78% early on Monday, continuing a recent slide for the company, while Amazon’s share price was down 1.25%. Overall, the tech-heavy Nasdaq was down 0.61% on Monday morning.
On Friday, Twitter said it banned Trump due to the “the risk of further incitement of violence.” The social media platform said two of Trump’s tweets on Friday violated its policy against glorification of violence and pointed to “plans for future armed protests have already begun proliferating on and off-Twitter,” including another proposed attack on the U.S. Capitol and other state capitol buildings on Jan. 17.
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“Our public interest framework exists to enable the public to hear from elected officials and world leaders directly. It is built on a principle that the people have a right to hold power to account in the open,” the company said. “However, we made it clear going back years that these accounts are not above our rules and cannot use Twitter to incite violence. We will continue to be transparent around our policies and their enforcement.”
Bank of America analysts, in a note shared with CNBC on Monday, said Twitter’s ban could “make content legislation more likely.” President Trump, even before his ban, has been pushing for changes to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which gives tech giants a broad legal shield to moderate content as they see fit on their platforms.
Twitter’s decision on Friday came as part of an overall tech crackdown on Trump and his supporters, following last week’s mob siege at the U.S. Capitol. Facebook on Thursday indefinitely banned Trump, saying it couldn’t allow its site to be used to “incite violent insurrection against a democratically elected government”; the ban is expected to last at least until Joe Biden is sworn is as president next week. Apple and Google, meanwhile, took Parler, a social media site that’s been popular among Trump supporters, off of their app stores and Amazon later pulled its web support for the site on Sunday night.
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