Twitter bans Trump for incitement of violence, lets 'Hang Mike Pence' trend for hours

Twitter banned the account of current president Donald Trump on Friday for "inciting violence", but allowed the "Hang Mike Pence" phrase to continue hours later.

The original line came about during the chaos in Washington DC on Wednesday, when people protesting outside took it up as a chant. Some people continued to repeat it as they broke into the Capitol.

Pence had released a statement stating his intention not to object to the certification of the electoral votes, which sparked rage among many of the more extreme Trump followers gathered.

A spokesperson from Twitter has since released a statement:

"We blocked the phrase and other variations of it from trending. We want trends to promote healthy discussions on Twitter. There are Rules for trends — if we identify accounts that violate these rules, we’ll take enforcement action."

By the time Twitter acted, the hashtag had been shared more than 14,000 times across the social network. Critics are saying that Twitter's slow response has to do with the fact that they don't really care about inciting violence so much as silencing people:

"Silencing speech is dangerous," wrote US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on his personal account. "It’s un-American. Sadly, this isn’t a new tactic of the Left. They’ve worked to silence opposing voices for years. We cannot let them silence 75M Americans. This isn’t the CCP."