Twitter Inc. is leading social-media stocks lower Monday as investors digest a new reality for the services after Twitter permanently banned President Donald Trump from its platform and Facebook Inc. said it would restrict him at least until the end of his term.
The announcement from Twitter TWTR, -5.91%, which came late Friday, followed a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters midweek. Twitter charged that Trump’s tweets after the riot served to glorify violence and went against the company’s terms of service. Facebook FB, -3.54% had announced Thursday that Trump would be barred from its platform at least until the inauguration.
Twitter shares are off 6.6% in Monday morning trading, while Facebook shares are down 3%. Shares of Apple Inc. AAPL, -2.25% and Alphabet Inc. GOOG, -2.18% GOOGL, -2.14%, both of which pulled right-wing social-media app Parler from their app stores citing lax moderation policies, are off 2.2% and 1.7%, respectively. Shares of Amazon.com Inc. AMZN, -1.94%, which booted Parler from its AWS web-hosting platform, are down 1.4%.
“While the week will certainly be remembered for far more shocking events, it’s not lost on us that we may be at the precipice of a change to long-standing internet rules of engagement,” Bernstein analyst Mark Shmulik wrote. “Perhaps the limited time left in Trump’s presidency eased social media worries of a presidential retaliation, while a more cynical view we’ve heard suggests that these platforms took actions precisely because of the Democrats’ recent Senate win.”
Cynical? Really?
Wow …
(Courtesy: SDA)
