Donald Trump could be banned from Twitter, company says, but President-elect's Facebook is probably safe

Anyone who violates the site’s terms of service would be kicked off the site – even the President

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump waves to the crowd at a fundraising event in Lawrenceville, New Jersey on May 19, 2016 (EDUARDO MUNOZ ALVAREZ/AFP/Getty Images)

Donald Trump could be banned from Twitter, the company has said.

The social network has said that if the President-elect breaks its rules with his tweets then they will shut down the account. But Facebook has suggested it will allow the incoming President to break the rules and stay on the service.

Twitter said that if Mr Trump explicitly makes threats or breaks the site’s rules in other ways, then it will ban him from using the service.

“The Twitter Rules prohibit violent threats, harassment, hateful conduct, and multiple account abuse, and we will take action on accounts violating those policies,” a Twitter spokesperson told Slate.

Pressed on whether that meant that it would ban Mr Trump for expressing such views, the company said that those rules apply to all accounts without exception, including for those that are verified.

The President-elect has used his Twitter in ways that have been regularly criticised. But he said at the debates that he was “not un-proud” of the way he tweets, despite the sustained criticism.

Twitter has banned other members of the alt-right in the past. Milo Yiannopoulos, for instance, was permanently kicked off the site after a campaign of abuse against Ghostbusters actor Leslie Jones.

Facebook, in comparison, has indicated in the past that it wouldn’t ban Donald Trump, even if he was breaking the site’s rules. That’s because his posts are more newsworthy and well-supported than those posted by normal users, it has suggested.

Mr Trump does run a Facebook account, but its posts tend to be more considered and feature graphics and posts that appear to have been written by his team. Many of Mr Trump’s tweets however appear to be more spontaneous, often written at strange hours of the day and apparently posted by the President-elect himself.