Facebook and Twitter Finally Respond to Trump

New year, new ... coup? On Wednesday, angry supporters of President Trump stormed the US Capitol building and violently disrupted a congressional session to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election. They were spurned on in no small part by the president himself, who urged them to march on the Capitol and then later took to Twitter to double (quintuple?) down on his false claims of election fraud. As result, a slew of social media companies opted to suspend Trump's account for varying lengths of time, citing his rhetoric as inflammatory and dangerous.

This week on Gadget Lab, WIRED politics writer Gilad Edelman joins us to talk about why companies like Facebook and Twitter decided to finally take action to shut down Trump's accounts. Then he gets a crash course on the wild world of CES—the first-ever all-virtual staging of the consumer tech industry’s tentpole event kicks off Monday.

Show Notes: 

Read Gilad’s story about Facebook and Twitter suspending the president’s accounts here. Follow all of our CES coverage here.

Recommendations: 

Gilad recommends that if you buy an item of clothing that you like, consider buying more than one. And also the Anker Soundcore Bluetooth Speaker. Lauren recommends the Headspace meditation app. Mike recommends a Black Manhattan cocktail.

Gilad Edelman can be found on Twitter @GiladEdelman. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

If you have feedback about the show, or just want to enter to win a $50 gift card, take our brief listener survey here.

Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices