Snapchat Says It Is No Longer Promoting Trump’s Account

Snapchat said Wednesday that is has stopped promoting President Donald Trump’s content on its “Discover” pages due to recent comments he has made about protesters demonstrating against racial inequality and police brutality in the wake of George Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police.

“We will not amplify voices who incite racial violence and injustice by giving them free promotion on Discover,” a spokesperson for the social media platform said in a statement to HuffPost. “Racial violence and injustice have no place in our society and we stand together with all who seek peace, love, equality, and justice in America.”

Snapchat’s Discover platform highlights content from news organizations, production companies, and public figures. More than half of the United States’ Generation Z demographic, which is ages 5 to 25, watches news content on Discover, according to the company.

A spokesperson for the Trump campaign lambasted the move, accusing Snapchat of trying to “rig the 2020 election” as well as censor conservative content.

“Radical Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel would rather promote extreme left riot videos and encourage their users to destroy America than share the positive words of unity, justice, and law and order from our President,” Brad Parscale, Trump’s 2020 campaign manager, said in a statement.

Trump’s Snapchat account remains public and available for viewing to users who subscribe to it or search for it, said Snapchat, which added that no account has the right to be promoted on Discover.

The decision to no longer promote Trump’s content was made over the weekend, the company said.

Spiegel, in a memo to his employees on Sunday, said that Snapchat “simply cannot promote accounts in America that are linked to people who incite racial violence, whether they do so on or off our platform.” Divisive users will still be allowed to use Snapchat, he added, “as long as the content that is published on Snapchat is consistent with our community guidelines.”

“There are plenty of debates to be had about the future of our country and the world. But there is simply no room for debate in our country about the value of human life and the importance of a constant struggle for freedom, equality, and justice,” he said.

Snapchat’s response comes after Twitter issued fact checks and warning labels to some of Trump’s tweets that were found to violate the platform’s rules about “glorifying violence.”

“When the looting starts, the shooting starts,” Trump said in one of the tweets that Twitter put a warning label on.

Facebook, in comparison, has said that it will not take any action against Trump’s comments on its platform. The company’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg, in a staff-wide call leaked to the press this week, said that suggesting looters would be shot was not inciting violence.

Trump has responded to Twitter’s labels by threatening to impose new regulations on social media companies or even shut them down entirely.