Former US President Donald Trump slammed Twitter for banning him but not ‘killers and muggers’ – Taliban. The Islamic group’s spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid’s account has not been suspended by the microblogging website as of Thursday.
“It’s disgraceful when you think that you have killers and muggers and dictators and horrible — some horrible dictators and countries, and they’re all on but the president of the United States, who had hundreds of millions of people, by the way, he gets taken off,” Donald Trump told Newsmax Wednesday in a phone interview.
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Mujahid’s unverified Twitter account was being used to provide updates on the Taliban’s capture of Afghan cities. It has more than 326,000 followers. Another Taliban spokesman, Qari Yousaf Ahmadi, has more than 66,000 followers.
While Trump has remained banned from the platform since the Jan. 6 Capitol riots, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid has been allowed to post updates freely on the platform.
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While Facebook, its subsidiaries – WhatsApp and Instagram and YouTube have banned Taliban and any content related to it, Twitter is yet to take an action.
In a statement, Twitter said, “The situation in Afghanistan is rapidly evolving. We’re also witnessing people in the country using Twitter to seek help and assistance. Twitter’s top priority is keeping people safe, and we remain vigilant. We are taking steps to safeguard the voices of those on our service who represent protected groups including humanitarian workers, journalists, news media organisations, human rights activists and others.”
“We will continue to proactively enforce our rules and review content that may violate Twitter Rules, specifically policies against glorification of violence, platform manipulation and spam.”
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Twitter had banned Donald Trump on January 8, while he was President, two days after the US Capitol attack. Trump’s account had more than 80 million followers. Justifying the ban, the microblogging platform had said that it had to ban Trump due to the risk of further incitement of violence.
Banning Taiban, a Facebook spokesperson told CNBC, “The Taliban is sanctioned as a terrorist organization under US law and we have banned them from our services under our Dangerous Organization policies.” TikTok and YouTube also recognized the Taliban as a terrorist group.