Snapchat stokes GOP ire for refusing to promote Trump's account

Snapchat drew a wave of repudiations from top Republicans but praise from Democrat Joe Biden after becoming the latest social media platform to penalize President Donald Trump for threatening violence against protesters.

The multimedia messaging company's decision to stop promoting Trump's account to other users instantly pulled the app's parent company, Snap, deeper into the Washington political-speech fight that has mainly focused on its peers.

Snap said it was reacting to threatening statements the president has made on other platforms, such as Twitter, not on Snapchat itself. And that made its action particularly troublesome, said one prominent Trump ally, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas).

“At this point, it is no surprise to anyone that Big Tech doesn’t believe in free speech and will happily censor views with which they disagree. But this move is extraordinary even when measured by that low bar," Cruz, a frequent critic of the tech industry, told POLITICO in a statement. "Snapchat is explicitly censoring admittedly unobjectionable speech as punishment for completely unrelated speech off of Snapchat’s platform.”

The Trump campaign, which has railed against Twitter and at Silicon Valley more broadly over accusations they stifle conservative viewpoints, accused Snapchat and its leaders of "trying to rig the 2020 election, illegally using their corporate funding to promote Joe Biden and suppress President Trump."

"Radical Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel would rather promote extreme left riot videos and encourage their users to destroy America than share the positive words of unity, justice, and law and order from our President," Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale said in a statement.

Biden, in contrast, appeared to voice support for Snapchat’s decision — and take a dig at Trump — in a video posted on the platform Wednesday.

“I just wanted to tell you I’m proud to be able to run for president and still be on Snapchat,” the presumptive Democratic nominee said.

Twitter's decisions last week to slap fact-checking notices and warning labels on some of Trump's tweets prompted the president to call for regulators and Congress to roll back legal protections for online businesses. It also became the latest occasion for Trump and other Republicans to accuse the dominant social media platforms of pervasive bias against conservatives, despite a lack of evidence that such a pattern exists.

Trump last week signed an executive order that tasks federal regulators with taking a hard look at whether online companies' liability protections should be narrowed, dramatically escalating his feud with Silicon Valley. The president singled out Twitter, Facebook and other social media companies in the order, but did not mention Snapchat.

Snap said in a statement Wednesday that it took the action against Trump's account in an effort to "not amplify voices who incite racial violence and injustice by giving them free promotion." The move applies to Snap's "Discover" feature, a curated section of the app that allows people to find the accounts of celebrities, news organizations and other prominent users.

"Racial violence and injustice have no place in our society and we stand together with all who seek peace, love, equality, and justice in America," the company continued.

No other platform has taken action based on Trump's rhetoric elsewhere online. Twitter labeled one of his tweets as "glorifying violence" for containing the phrase "when the looting starts, the shooting starts," and before that it placed fact-checking notices on two of his tweets alleging widespread fraud in mail-in voting. Facebook, in contrast, has declined to take any action on the same words posted to its platform.

Twitter has since faced withering criticism from Trump and his allies, while Republicans have applauded Facebook's decision to stand down on the president's posts.

Snap made its decision after a tweet on Saturday in which the president remarked, in part, that any demonstrators who intruded onto the White House grounds would be "greeted with the most vicious dogs and ominous weapons, I have ever seen."

Spiegel, the CEO of parent-company Snap, wrote in a blog post the following day that the company "simply cannot promote accounts in America that are linked to people who incite racial violence, whether they do so on or off our platform." The New York Times first reported Snap's decision.

The move prompted blowback from Trump's allies on Capitol Hill, who have accused social media companies of taking editorial stances in their decisions about whether to act against posts by the president and his supporters.

“Taking President Trump off the Snap Discover page is a decision rooted in partisanship," said Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), another prominent GOP tech critic. "Snap should spend less time targeting our Commander in Chief and more time taking down drug dealers and child predators on its platform.”

But free speech experts said Wednesday the company has the right under the Constitution to refuse to promote Trump's account.

"This is well within Snapchat's right to make a decision about how it's going to moderate speech on its platform," said Katie Fallow, a senior staff attorney at the Knight First Amendment Institute. "There's certainly no First Amendment violation because the First Amendment only applies to actions by the government, not by private companies."