Snapchat Stops Promoting Donald Trump’s Account

After racial violence taken fire in America, Snapchat refrained promoting Donald Trump’s account. His username, RealDonaldTrump, will remain on the website and will continue to feature on reports of searches. But he won’t appear in the Discover tab app anymore, which promotes news publishers, elected officials, celebrities, and influencers. 

In an official statement, spokesperson of a parent company Snap stated that, “We shall never encourage the voices raised against racial violence and that too coming from the president of the state. He further added, racial discrimination and injustice have no place in our culture and society as we stand together for equality, love and brotherhood.” 

Snapchat said there will be no promotion of Trump’s Snap stories on the Discover homepage of the app. It won’t remove Trump’s public Snapchat account. 

Bloomberg revealed last month that Trump, who has more than 1.5 million followers on the site, has seen his Snapchat following more than triple in the past year for its frequent advertising in the Explore tab of the app. The Trump campaign valued the youthful audience of Snapchat, many of whom will vote in the 2020 election for the first time.

A Snap spokeswoman said the social media site has a duty to its customers to show them shared content that can enrich their Snapchat experience, noting that the Discover page is not a “town square” where everyone will talk to other customers openly. 

Trump has yet to respond publicly to Snapchat’s decision. The change followed Twitter ‘s decision to cover and release a public note on one of Trump’s tweets last week, saying that the post undermined its “glorification of abuse” policies. This move will create conflict between the White House and social media which intensified last week after Twitter attached fact checking tags on some of the Donald Trump’s tweet.