YouTube Removes New Content Uploaded on Donald J Trump Channel, Disables Comments

YouTube on Wednesday announced it had removed new content uploaded to Donald J Trump's channel for violating its policies. The Alphabet-owned company also disabled comments on Trump's channel indefinitely due to ‘safety concerns'. This comes after US civil rights group threatened to organise an advertiser boycott against YouTube if it didn't take down Trump's verified channel, which has over 2.76 million subscribers. Facebook, Twitter, Snap, and even Reddit have all recently blocked Trump after his supports stormed the US Capitol last week, leading to five deaths.

The online video-sharing platform took to Twitter to confirm that new content uploaded to Trump's verified channel has been removed for violating policies. YouTube has also prevented the channel from uploading new content for seven days. The tweet reads, “After review, and in light of concerns about the ongoing potential for violence, we removed new content uploaded to Donald J. Trump's channel for violating our policies. It now has its 1st strike and is temporarily prevented from uploading new content for a minimum of seven days.”

Furthermore, YouTube has also disabled comments on Trump's channel indefinitely. “Given the ongoing concerns about violence, we will also be indefinitely disabling comments on President Trump's channel, as we've done to other channels where there are safety concerns found in the comments section,” the second tweet explains. Earlier in the week, US civil rights groups threatened to organise an advertiser boycott against Alphabet's YouTube if it does not remove President Donald Trump's channel.

YouTube was the last of the major tech companies to act against Trump after the US Capitol violence. Trump's channel, however, has not seen a complete ban on YouTube and still exists with videos uploaded seven hours ago still accessible. As mentioned, Trump's social media accounts on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat have been removed since last week, and pro-Trump subreddit ‘r/DonaldTrump' has also been blocked by Reddit.

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg recently said that the company has no plans on lifting Donald Trump account ban after the events at US Capitol. Twitter says it has permanently suspended @realDonaldTrump's account “due to the risk of further incitement of violence.” His tweets from @POTUS and @WhiteHouse accounts were also deleted, and Trump campaign director Gary Coby's account was also suspended.

Even the Parler app that became home to Trump supporters after the social media band has been removed from Google Play and App Store, and kicked off Amazon Web Services servers.