A protest by pro-Trump groups following Twitter’s ban of President Donald Trump from its platform at the tech company’s San Francisco headquarters on Monday has failed after a dismal turnout.
Dozens of San Francisco police officers were called in for security. They erected a barricade outside of the Twitter building near the city’s downtown area to prepare for what was anticipated to be a major demonstration in defence of the president.
But the protest was a total bust – some outlets, like SF Gate, reported pro-Trump demonstrators to be nowhere in sight, while others reported only some speaking out against Dorsey’s crackdown on the president.
“I don’t like being censored,” one protester told KTVU. “And I feel conservative voices are being censored.” ABC7 News reported that two people showed up.
ABC7News reporter Dan Noyes was on the scene Monday morning, and at 9:20 a.m. local time, said in a video on Twitter that the protest was “a bust,” and a police source told him they don’t think anything is going to happen after all today.
There were counter-protestors as well, like one man who brandished a sign reading “Impeach! Remove! Today!” Another held a sign reading “counter Trump’s coup attempts.”
On Friday, Twitter made the unprecedented decision to permanently suspend Trump from its platform. Trump has been an ardent Twitter user throughout his presidency, posting regularly from his account @realDonaldTrump, whose page is now blank.
Trump’s posts, which reached upwards of 86 million of his followers, often prompted Twitter to add warning labels due to the baseless claims of election fraud or other misinformation made therein. One of the first times Twitter did so was in May, when Trump tweeted that mail-in voting necessitated by the COVID-19 pandemic would be “substantially fraudulent” and will lead to a “Rigged Election.”
(Business Insider Africa)