Donald Trump shock: Snapchat announces it will not promote POTUS's account

Previously, President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order targeting social media platforms, following his grudge against Twitter for fact-checking some of his messages. Now, Snapchat has spoken up against Trump, stating that they will no longer promote his account.

BBC reports that the platform will no longer be promoting Trump’s account and taking him off the app’s “Discover” feature. The company explained that their decision to remove Trump from the feature is because they do not want to boost “voices who incite racial violence and injustice.”

The app’s parent company Snap, also spoke up about the decision to no longer promote the president, saying that they will stand with the people in seeking equality and justice in light of the ongoing protests. CEO Evan Speigel sent a memo to all of his staff with his views on the current protests and unrest that reignited following the murder of George Floyd at the hands of police officers in Minnesota. “As for Snapchat, we simply cannot promote accounts in America that are linked to people who incite racial violence, whether they do so on or off our platform.”

Trump’s account will still remain, but because his account will no longer be featured, only those who follow him or search for him will be able to see his updates.

With Snapchat and Twitter speaking against Trump and the White House, there would be more pressure placed onto Facebook for doing the same. This is especially because Facebook also has similar fact-checking and misinformation features yet CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said that they will not take any action, which was met with a lot of backlash from activists.

Trump has since pushed for a more aggressive approach in dealing with the protests that have escalated into riots and heated encounters. Many critics across the board have urged for him either to stay silent to avoid worsening the situation or to show some empathy towards those affected, yet Trump appears to have dismissed the advice and still pushed for a more aggressive, potentially violent approach. With this, Defense Secretary Mark Esper has spoken against the possible invoking of the Insurrection Act, which allows the president to deploy active-duty soldiers to respond to the protests.

Esper explained that he is opposed to the invocation as it should only be used as a last resort and not at this time.