- "Given the violent events in Washington, DC, and increased risk of harm, we began permanently suspending thousands of accounts that were primarily dedicated to sharing QAnon content on Friday afternoon," Twitter (NYSE:TWTR) confirmed in a blog post. "We've been clear that we will take strong enforcement action on behavior that has the potential to lead to offline harm."
- "Since Friday, more than 70,000 accounts have been suspended as a result of our efforts, with many instances of a single individual operating numerous accounts. These accounts were engaged in sharing harmful QAnon-associated content at scale and were primarily dedicated to the propagation of this conspiracy theory across the service."
- Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) said it will also remove content containing the phrase "stop the steal" from its services in the lead-up to President-elect Joe Biden's inauguration on Jan. 20, but will allow "robust conversations related to the election outcome to continue."
- Meanwhile, Parler has filed a lawsuit against Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), accusing the tech giant of violating antitrust law after it suspended web hosting of the "free speech" microblogging platform. In a complaint filed in federal court in Washington state, Parler said the decision was "motivated by political animus" and designed to reduce competition to the benefit of Twitter, which is also an AWS customer. Parler is asking for an emergency order to reject Amazon's shutdown, saying it was the equivalent of "pulling the plug on a hospital patient on life support" and "will kill Parler's business - at the very time it is set to skyrocket."
- Twitter shares are up 1.5% in premarket trade following a selloff on Monday that came after the company permanently suspended President Trump's account.