San Francisco police are preparing for possible protests and unrest outside Twitter's downtown headquarters.
At least 100 police officers were outside the building on Market and 10th St and had surrounded it with metal barricades by 9 a.m. Monday.
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.
"Twitter is not in the building. They've been gone for months," said 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.
SFPD say they have sufficient resources to handle any large crowds that may materialize, but in the morning there were only a handful of counter-demonstrators. One man 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 says it will no longer host the app.
