At Facebook, that unwillingness changed on Wednesday after Mr. Trump egged on his supporters using social media and a mob stormed the Capitol building. From their homes, Mr. Zuckerberg and other executives — including the chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg, the head of policy, Monica Bickert, the vice president of integrity, Guy Rosen, and the head of international policy and communications, Nicholas Clegg — dialed into video calls to discuss what to do, said two people who were on the call and who were not authorized to speak publicly.
After Twitter locked Mr. Trump’s account late Wednesday, Mr. Zuckerberg approved removing two posts from the president’s Facebook page, the two people said. By that evening, Mr. Zuckerberg had decided to restrict Mr. Trump’s Facebook account for the rest of his term — and perhaps indefinitely, they said.
“What we watched and saw in real-time on TV — that was atrocious, a violent insurrection, deeply disturbing,” Mr. Zuckerberg said on a conference call with Facebook employees on Thursday, which The New York Times listened to. “You just can’t have a functioning democracy without a peaceful transition of power.”
Mr. Zuckerberg also criticized Mr. Trump directly on the call, saying the president was “fanning the flames of his supporters who moved to overturn the election outcome.”
Ms. Bickert added that while Mr. Trump’s posts had not been direct calls for violence — the standard Facebook uses to take down posts — executives “felt that these posts did more to contribute to, rather than diminish, the risk of continuing violence.”
The social media companies’ clampdown extended beyond Mr. Trump. Twitter overnight permanently suspended Lin Wood, a lawyer who had used his account to promote the conspiracy theory QAnon and to urge on Wednesday’s mob. The company also removed a post from Dan Bongino, a conservative podcast host, on Thursday.
That helped renew right-wing criticism that conservatives were being censored by the platforms, which are headquartered in liberal Silicon Valley. Mr. Trump has accused the companies of censorship in the past and signed an executive order last year intended to strip legal protections from the platforms.