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How are Hong Kong protesters supporting Donald Trump? Twitter icons changed to POTUS's photo to oppose ban

Many of these individuals have found 'uncomfortable parallels' with how Trump has been banned on Twitter and how their speech has been 'suppressed' by Chinese Communist Party

After the Capitol was breached on January 6, 2021, by pro-Donald Trump supporters, many called for invoking of the 25th Amendment as they believe that he had incited the rioters. The president is known to tweet his mind for years now, and most recently, he was banned by Twitter and other social media sites after his tweets encouraged violence. While many memes took over the internet to rejoice that POTUS was "finally" banned from Twitter, it turns out that pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong were in solidarity with Trump. 

Why are they against Twitter's censorship?

Reportedly many of these individuals have found "uncomfortable parallels" with how Trump has been banned on Twitter and how their speech has been "suppressed" by the CCP aka Chinese Communist Party. According to Coconuts Hong Kong, some of the users support Trump because of his "opposition" to China, while others point to the hypocrisy of social media sites such as Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, asking why other accounts that "incite violence" are not banned. The article also revealed that one of the users wrote, "Why has the company not banned other accounts also appearing to spread fake news or incite violence?” after saying that banning the president from Twitter was “unacceptable".

How are they supporting Trump on Twitter?

The pro-democracy people from Hong Kong are changing their Twitter avatar to the President's picture and are protesting against him being banned from the social media platform, according to Coconuts Hong Kong. One tweet read, "Many Hong Kong netizens show solidarity with President Trump by changing their profile image to President #Trump," along with a picture of a number of users that showcase Trumps' avatar. The user further added, "Those who have changed their profile pic may NOT necessarily be President #Trump's supports, but simply because of the distaste for the censorship. It has nothing to do with him personally but about defending the freedom of speech. Thank you."

China's response to Trump's Twitter ban

The country's state-run Global Times revealed on Sunday that the actions taken by Twitter after the Capitol riot that ensued last week were “totally in sharp contrast to these platforms’ reactions to violent riots in Hong Kong in 2019, which dragged the city into chaos lasting about one year and inflicted huge financial losses".

Part of the article reads, "In addition to allowing speeches that spread and stirred violence, foreign social platforms Facebook, Twitter and Telegram have been popular tools for Hong Kong rioters to call for illegal assemblies and to doxx police officers. Posts promoting Hong Kong secession are rife on these platforms, the Global Times previously learned from the Hong Kong police. Platforms such as Telegram have fallen into rioters' hands. These companies have always refused to cooperate with police on law enforcement issues, and because there were no legal terms, they only operated under corporation status, Ronny Chan, chairman of the Superintendents' Association of the Hong Kong Police Force, told the Global Times previously. "

Furthermore, the article also quoted "a user of China's Twitter-like Sina Weibo platform" which reads, "The Hong Kong rioters who were actively inciting violence far outnumbered the US protesters, and lasted longer, why didn't they ban them? Those platforms will lose their moral high ground of advertising freedom of speech forever." A Breitbart article was quick to explain that Weibo in fact only "exists" because of "China’s authoritarian regime bans Twitter for everyone except Communist officials". Coconuts Hong Kong also revealed that while Twitter said that it had "removed over 32,000 Twitter accounts with ties to propaganda networks in mainland China, Russia and Turkey," high profile leaders like Trump were not targeted.