President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign lashed out at Snapchat Wednesday after the social media company decided not to promote the president’s content.
Snapchat’s “Discover” feature, which highlights content from celebrities, regularly spotlights the president’s account. (RELATED: Tale Of Two Silicon Valley Giants: How Facebook And Twitter Are Dealing With Calls To Ban Trump’s Content)
“We are not currently promoting the President’s content on Snapchat’s Discover platform. We will not amplify voices who incite racial violence and injustice by giving them free promotion on Discover,” Rachel Racusen, a spokeswoman for Snapchat’s parent company, told The Wrap in a statement Wednesday.
“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,” Racusen said.
The Trump re-election campaign criticized the company’s decision.
“Snapchat is trying to rig the 2020 election, illegally using their corporate funding to promote Joe Biden and suppress President Trump,” campaign manager Brad Parscale said in a press release responding to Snapchat.
“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,” Parscale said. “If you’re a conservative, they do not want to hear from you, they do not want you to vote.”
The Trump campaign did not provide examples of Snapchat’s promotion of riot videos, but campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh told the Daily Caller News Foundation that Parscale’s claims are “self-evident from looking at Snapchat and their content.”
Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel wrote in a memo to company staff Sunday that, “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.”
U.S. President Donald Trump makes a statement to the press in the Rose Garden about restoring “law and order” in the wake of protests at the White House June 01, 2020 in Washington, DC. Earlier in the day, President Donald Trump (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Snapchat’s move came after Trump signed an executive order in May calling for Twitter and other major social media platforms to lose their protection from legal liability if they engage in censorship. Twitter placed a “fact check” label on a May 26 Trump tweet in which he alleged that mail-in ballots would lead to massive voter fraud.
Twitter also partially concealed a May 29 Trump tweet in which the president said the “THUGS” rioting in Minneapolis are “dishonoring the memory of George Floyd,” a black man who died after a police officer knelt on his neck for several minutes, according to video of the incident.
Trump routinely addresses what he believes is Google and Facebook’s bias. His administration orchestrated a White House social media summit in 2019, inviting many popular conservative social media influencers to discuss ways in which big tech companies are supposedly harassing them.