Snapchat to stop promoting President Trump's content

Snapchat said Wednesday it would no longer promote President Donald Trump’s content in its Discover section, a move that brings the messaging company closer to Twitter’s thinking in the ongoing debate over political speech.

The company said in a statement that it would not “amplify voices who incite racial violence.”

Snapchat’s Discover section typically features content from news organizations, brands, celebrities and sometimes politicians. The president’s account remains visible on the platform, and anyone can follow the account for updates.

Snapchat’s change will remove Trump from the Discover section.

“We are not currently promoting the president’s content on Snapchat’s Discover platform,” the company said. “We will not amplify voices who incite racial violence and injustice by giving them free promotion on Discover. 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 is not the first social media company to take action on content posted from the president’s officials accounts in the last several weeks. Twitter appended a label over one of Trump’s tweets saying it “glorified violence,” adding that the tweet broke the company’s rules, but added that “Twitter has determined that it may be in the public’s interest for the tweet to remain accessible.”

The tweet included the phrase “When the looting starts, the shooting starts,” a reference to a racist quote from former Miami police chief Walter Headley in 1967.

The tweet was then reposted to the White House’s official Twitter account, and subsequently enforced with the same actions from Twitter.

Facebook has taken no action, a stance that has become the source of external and internal pressure on the company.

Facebook employees staged a virtual walkout on Monday for what employees deemed insufficient action taken on the president’s inflammatory posts. The posts that were labeled by Twitter as “glorifying violence” remain visible and shareable on the president’s official Facebook pages.

The latest posts to Trump’s Snapchat feature were the last few words of Trump’s statement from the White House’s Rose Garden on Monday afternoon. In his address, he claimed to have “strongly recommended to every governor to deploy the National Guard in sufficient numbers that we dominate the streets.”

The Snapchat post then features a news clip of Trump walking from the Rose Garden to St. John’s Episcopal Church. The next Snapchat post shows the president holding up a bible in front of the church.

In the minutes before the president’s speech, peaceful protesters were pushed back by law enforcement officers — a crackdown that has since become a flashpoint in the national debate about police violence.

source: nbcnews.com