Credit: Unsplash

The President’s suspension has shaken up the social platform.

Last week, following the riot at the United States Capitol building, in which a large crowd of supporters for President Donald Trump stormed the premises in an unspecified attempt to prevent the Senate from confirming President-Elect Joe Biden’s victory, Trump himself made several posts to his infamous Twitter account. While the posts offered lukewarm condemnations of the rioters, Trump himself continued to double down on his assertions that the election was stolen from him, rhetoric that many argue was the instigating factor of the riot in the first place. After multiple years of attempting to remain neutral on the matter, this was the last straw for Twitter, who permanently banned Trump from its service over the weekend.

Since Trump’s election in 2016, many commentators, both on and off of Twitter, have asserted that Trump’s presence was one of the major factors keeping the platform popular, and that if he were to be banned, things would start to go south. As of this morning, there may be some truth to those claims, as at the opening of trading on Wall Street, Twitter’s stock value dropped by nearly 13%.

Political pundits are projecting Trump’s banning will rekindle discussions on Section 230, the US law that that absolves internet companies from taking responsibility for what its users upload. “While a Democratic administration may be less focused on significant reform of Section 230, recent events may make content legislation more likely,” BofA Securities analysts said.

“We would anticipate new proposed legislation in Congress on Social Media content given recent events, but note content concerns are not new and we think that new laws will provide social media companies with better guidelines and less uncertainty,” the analysts posited.

lmaooo

twitter's stock is in freefall pic.twitter.com/4iF4FMsVG7

— Brick (@TheHinduDindu) January 11, 2021

Other social media platforms like Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram, all of which joined Twitter in banning Trump from their use, also suffered smaller drops in stock value. Whether these drops will be sustained in the coming days remains to be seen.