There have been good arguments for private companies to not silence elected officials, but all those arguments are predicated on the protection of constitutional governance.

Twitter and Facebook have to cut him off. There are no legitimate equities left and labeling won't do it.

The last reason to keep Trump's account up was the possibility that he would try to put the genie back in the bottle but as many expected, that is impossible for him.

There will always be the alt-sites and peer-to-peer, but at least the damage he does would be more contained.

When this is over, we will have to again wrestle with the legitimate problem of trying to hold multiple ideas in our heads:

1) Tech platforms are too powerful
2) Free expression is critical to democracy
3) The speech of democratic actors can be extremely dangerous

But #2 and 3 are based upon the idea that these speakers are *democratic* actors, looking to shape outcomes through argument and persuasion. The subversion of democratic process eliminates the basic reasons for carrying such speech (whether labeled, downranked or not).

As our team documented throughout this cycle, the disinformation problem is almost uniquely being driven by political elites, including the President. This means that action on a minority of accounts by a handful of platforms might actually have impact. https://www.eipartnership.net/rapid-response 

We are currently working on our final report from the thousands of incidents the @2020Partnership handled during the election, but this is a good snapshot of the "elite disinfo" problem and why reducing disinfo doesn't require widespread suppression. https://www.eipartnership.net/rapid-response/repeat-offenders

First steps, but doing this per-item is going to be hard against somebody who enjoys pushing the line and then claiming the moral high ground when crossing it. As with other big accounts, suspension is the only deterrent. https://twitter.com/guyro/status/1346950532372393985

After FB moved first on the video, Twitter now draws an explicit red line. https://twitter.com/TwitterSafety/status/1346970432017031178