HE is the leader of the Free World but that doesn’t make Donald Trump immune from being banned from his favourite pastime ... tweeting.

The US president was taken off Twitter last week for 12 hours for encouraging his supporters to march on the US Capitol, but was then ­reinstated. Later, Twitter decided to permanently suspend his account “due to the risk of further incitement of violence”.

For many his ban was not before time after a string of provocative tweets over the years. Twitter has resisted calls to block the president from as far back as 2017 when they deemed his tweets “newsworthy”. While his 2016 election was riddled with accusations of dirty tricks, and foreign election interference and social media manipulation.

President Trump was also suspended from Facebook and Instagram with those bans set to be reviewed on January 20 when Joe Biden succeeds him in the White House.

But why only now? And what exactly triggers a ban?

Twitter’s Help Centre sets out The Twitter Rules which users must follow or risk their accounts being blocked.

Under headings Safety, Privacy, Authenticity, Enforcement and Appeals, and Third-party advertising in video content, Twitter defines what is and isn’t allowed on its platform.

Twitter’s mission statement is laid out as: “Twitter’s purpose is to serve the public conversation. Violence, harassment and other similar types of behaviour discourage people from expressing themselves and ultimately diminish the value of global public conversation. Our rules are to ensure all people can participate in the public conversation freely and safely.”

One Trump tweet included a video of the president repeating unfounded claims that the US election was taken from him and encouraging his supporters to disperse after violence erupted at the Capitol. He said that law and order were needed and that he loved his supporters.

Facebook has a set of Community Standards which its users must adhere to and which falls into four categories: Authenticity, Safety, Privacy and Dignity which Trump has now breached. It’s been down this road before but on individual posts such as in October when Trump had suggested that Covid-19 was like flu.

It said then: “We remove incorrect information about the severity of Covid-19.”

CEO Mark Zuckerberg reacted to the storming of Capitol Hill by accusing President Trump of trying to undermine the transition to Joe Biden. He said: “We believe the risks of allowing the president to continue to use our service during this period are simply too great.”

Meanwhile, YouTube immediately enacted a stricter election fraud misinformation policy to make it easier to suspend the president for posting false election claims.

And Twitter had added a tag to a Trump post that read: “This claim of election fraud is disputed, and this Tweet can’t be replied to, retweeted or liked due to a risk of violence.” Twitter also removed a subsequent tweet.

Twitter had, in truth, been ratcheting up the pressure on Trump since last May when they put an alert on a tweet of his for the first time where he had linked mail-in ballots to fraud.

“Trump falsely claimed that mail-in ballots would lead to ‘a rigged election.’ However, fact-checkers say there is no evidence that mail-in ballots are linked to voter fraud,” a statement from the company read once users clicked on the alert.

Big Tech had held off from blocking or banning President Trump before last week because they were judging him by higher standards because of his position.

Alex Stamos, Facebook’s former chief of security tweeted on Wednesday shortly before Facebook and Twitter took action: “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.

“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.”

READ MORE: US is slowly going in right direction with Trump gone – but is the UK?

THE Scottish Greens co-leader Patrick Harvie has spoken out about the influence of the social network firms. He said: “Social media companies have a responsibility to remove disinformation from their platforms.”

Such disinformation has been called out on the domestic front too with the most prominent rule breaker pro-independence blogger Stuart Campbell. Campbell, the creator of the Wings Over Scotland blog, saw his Twitter account for a new pro-Yes party @WingsPartyScot banned as soon as it was created.

His @RevStu account was then locked by Twitter leading him to tweet under @SealandGazette which was then suspended.

The quick transition to new ­accounts, a strategy deployed to some effect by Daesh and which has come to be known as Whack-A-Mole, means that social network platforms are continually chasing a moving ­target. At the same time Big Tech ­continues to use, be used and be abused across the spectrum with the American ­Senate hauling Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Facebook CEO Zuckerberg before a committee to ­accuse them of allowing incendiary content as well as censorship.

Trump’s Twitter account @realDonaldTrump had 88.7m followers. His Facebook community has 32,966,664 likes for his home page where his bio under his position as 45th President of the United States reads: “Donald J. Trump has always dreamed big and pushed the boundaries of what is possible. He’s devoted his life to building business, jobs and achieving the American Dream – now, that is what he is doing for our country.

“In June 2015, Donald Trump announced his candidacy for President of the United States and started a movement unlike anything before. This movement, made up of millions of hard-working men and women, led to one of the greatest presidential ­victories in history. But this movement is far from over.

“Today, President Trump is continuing the fight to put America First and fulfilling his promises to the American people. America is now stronger, prouder, and safer. The American dream is BACK.”