A handful of supporters of President Trump gathered outside Twitter's headquarters in downtown San Francisco Monday.
“I just hate the censorship, I feel like conservative voices are being silenced,” said Rebecca Brooks.
One woman expressed her support for the demonstrators, yelling out "this is communism" as she drove by.
Over the weekend, there were calls on social media for President Trump’s supporters to hold a protest after Twitter permanently removed his account and several other accounts associated with his administration.
The company said Trump had violated their rules and were concerned that he would use the site to incite more violence after a mob of his supporters swarmed the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday.
San Francisco police were prepared for a large scale demonstration and unrest, with at least 100 police officers outside the building on Market and 10th St. and metal crowd control barricades surrounding the building. But by the afternoon only a few protestors had materialized.
"Twitter is not in the building. They’ve been gone for months," pointed out Joy McDonald, manager of The Market, a grocery store and food court on the first floor of Twitter’s building. "Twitter is on the top floor of this building. There’s nobody here and the only people you’re affecting are small businesses in this community at this point, cause there’s no one here to make a change to what Twitter’s policies are or what they’ve done."
Twitter employees have been working from home since March because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Several counter-demonstrators also made an appearance including one man who carried a sign that read, "Impeach! Remove! Today!"
Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube and many other social media platforms have suspended the president’s account in some form. Shopify took down two online stores affiliated with Trump and TikTok is removing content and redirecting hashtags including #StormTheCapitol.
Many conservatives migrated over the weekend to Parler, a right-wing social media platform, but that app has been removed from Apple and Google’s app stores and Amazon Web Services said it will no longer host the app.
Related
