Americans split on barring Trump from social media
Americans are split on whether former President Donald Trump should be barred from social media. Some 49% of US adults say Trump’s accounts should be permanently banned from social media, while some 50% say they should not be. Views are deeply divided along partisan lines, according to a new Pew Research Center survey.
The survey, made in April, was conducted before Facebook’s independent oversight board upheld for now the suspension of Trump’s accounts on Facebook and Instagram. The accounts were suspended in connection with the riot at the US Capitol on January 6 claiming Trump violated terms of use and that his rhetoric could result in more violence.
The Facebook Oversight Board was created by CEO Mark Zuckerberg making final decisions about controversial content. In a less noticed case, the Oversight Board recently ordered Facebook to reinstate a post that accused Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi of participating in efforts to kill the country’s Sikh religious minority.
“Republicans and Democrats hold deeply contrasting views of a lifetime ban for Trump. Just 11% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say Trump’s accounts should be permanently banned from social media, while 88% say they should not be. By comparison, 81% of Democrats and Democratic leaners say his accounts should be banned permanently. Roughly one-in-five Democrats (18%) do not support this type of ban on Trump’s accounts.”
“While most Republicans do not support permanently barring Trump from social media, there are some ideological differences within the party. More than nine-in-ten conservative Republicans (95%) believe Trump’s accounts should not be permanently banned from social media, but that share is lower among moderate and liberal Republicans (77%).”
Among Democrats, liberals (85%) are somewhat more likely than conservatives and moderates (78%) to favor a permanent ban, though large majorities in both ideological groups favor it.
In a survey shortly after the riots, 58% of adults said they thought social media companies’ decisions to ban Trump’s accounts were the right thing to do, while 41% believed those decisions were the wrong thing to do.
And then – just as in the April survey – 78% of Republicans said social media companies’ decisions to ban Trump’s accounts following the riots were the wrong thing to do, while 89% of Democrats (89%) supported these decisions.
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