Twitter definitively removed the account of the United States president from its service on Friday, citing apprehensions regarding the “potential for further encouragement of violence” and the president’s prior rule violations.

“Considering the severe events of this week, we communicated on Wednesday that additional breaches of the Twitter Rules could lead to this specific outcome,” Twitter stated. “… We have consistently made clear over the years that these accounts are not exempt from our rules and cannot utilize Twitter to promote violence.”

The president will be unable to circumvent Twitter’s ban by establishing a new account or employing a pseudonym, a Twitter representative clarified to TechCrunch. Should the president attempt to bypass his suspension, any account he utilizes will also be subject to a ban for violating Twitter’s policies.

Update: The president seemingly did so on Friday evening, appearing on @POTUS. “We will not be SILENCED! Twitter is not about FREE SPEECH,” the president tweeted through that account, suggesting that his team may develop an independent platform in the “coming months.”

Twitter underscored that the possibility of a ban was clearly communicated and described this week’s occurrences as “horrific.” While the president had previously violated the platform’s guidelines, his account was maintained under special considerations applied to world leaders and information deemed to be in the public interest.

In a detailed explanation, Twitter released an assessment of the president’s tweets that resulted in his suspension. Two tweets posted on Thursday appeared to be the final breaches, with Twitter interpreting them as potentially encouraging violence given the context of the week’s events.

On Wednesday, Twitter temporarily suspended the president’s account pending the removal of three tweets that the company identified as violating its rules. The account was scheduled to be reactivated 12 hours after those deletions, and the president returned to the platform on Thursday evening with a video in which he appeared to acknowledge his election loss for the first time.

The president exceeded acceptable boundaries with Twitter when he did not condemn a group of his supporters who engaged in a violent disturbance at the Capitol building while Congress convened to certify the election results. In one tweet, the president shared a video in which he gently urged the group to disperse, while simultaneously reassuring his passionate followers that he cherished them and that they were “special.”

At that time, Twitter stated that the president’s tweets constituted “repeated and serious violations” of its policy regarding civic integrity and warned that any subsequent violations would result in “permanent suspension” of the president’s account.

Wednesday, January 6:

• 1 PM ET: The president concludes a rally near the White House protesting the legitimate election outcomes. During the event, he encourages attendees to proceed toward Congress.
• 2:15 PM: Supporters of the president breach the interior of the Capitol building.
• 4:15 PM: The president tweets a video gently advising rioters to return home and stating, “we love you.”
• 5 PM: Twitter applies a prominent warning label to the video.
• 6 PM: The president tweets again, failing to denounce the violence and urging his supporters to “Remember this day forever!”
• 7 PM: Twitter locks the president’s account until he deletes three tweets and waits for a 12-hour period.

Thursday, January 7:

• The president’s account is reinstated. In a video shared on Twitter, the president personally denounces the “heinous attack” for the first time and delivers what sounds like a concession speech.

Friday, January 8:

• 9:45 AM: The president tweets again with a less conciliatory tone, declaring that anyone who voted for him will “not be treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!”
• 10:45 AM: The president tweets that he will not attend President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration.
• 6:20 PM: Twitter announces that @realDonaldTrump is suspended permanently.

While Facebook initially implemented more extensive measures against the president’s account following Wednesday’s tumultuous siege on Capitol Hill, Twitter has a longer history of disagreements with the outgoing president. In early 2020, Twitter’s decision to add a contextual label to a presidential tweet labeling mail-in voting “fraudulent” prompted the president to issue a retaliatory, though largely ineffective, executive order targeting social media companies.

The president maintained this resentment throughout the year, attempting to advance a failed repeal of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act — the law that shields online companies from liability for user-generated content — through Congress in increasingly unconventional ways.

Twitter’s decision on Friday to suspend the sitting U.S. president from its platform represents a momentous action — and one the company avoided taking for the past four years. In the aftermath of Wednesday’s insurrectionist violence, and the president’s role in instigating it, the largest social networks appear to have finally reached their limit.

However, as with election misinformation, dangerous COVID-19 inaccuracies, and the camouflaged extremists who attacked the Capitol this week, it is too late to reverse the disruption that the president unleashed over the last four years, 280 characters at a time.