Trump banned from Facebook for at least next two weeks: CEO Zuckerberg

Yahoo Finance’s Julie Hyman, Brian Sozzi, and Myles Udland discuss Trump's ban from social media.

Video Transcript

MYLES UDLAND: And just as we were coming back to break, Facebook announcing that it is-- will restrict President Trump's accounts for at least the next two weeks on both Facebook and on Instagram. So we're continuing to see the social media fallout from the events yesterday.

And Julie, we talked a bit about the way social media companies would have to handle this in the beginning of the show. Obviously, this is a very rapidly developing situation, but I suppose not a huge surprise to sort of see Facebook and Twitter come out and say this is not going to be a one day thing, and it's going to be at least two weeks. But one wonders if maybe Trump's had his last post on Facebook and Twitter.

JULIE HYMAN: Yeah, it's a good question. I'm just looking at the Mark Zuckerberg post, where he made this announcement. And to your point, he says we're extending the block we've placed on the president's Facebook and Instagram accounts indefinitely and for at least the next two weeks until the peaceful transition of power is complete.

Obviously, people not necessarily having a high degree of confidence that the president is going to keep his word in terms of cooperating with a peaceful transition of power here. And you say it's not necessarily a surprise, but of course, this is after years of activists agitating for the various social media platforms to delete his account or, in some way, constrain his comments in other ways.

So it's going to be really interesting to see now if this is, as Nina Jankowicz just pointed out, oh, it's quite coincidental that the Democrats are going to be taking control of the Senate, because are we going to see some sort of regulation? Is this an effort also to sort of head that off? We'll have to see what happens in the early days of the next administration on that front.

MYLES UDLAND: Yeah, I mean, he's going to be--

BRIAN SOZZI: Also, what is the long-term plan here--

MYLES UDLAND: Yeah, go ahead, Sozz.

BRIAN SOZZI: What's the long-term plan here? What's the long-term plan here, guys? Not so much to put a statement out or two. What do you do with his accounts on the first day after he is no longer president? They're going to have to come up with something for this.

MYLES UDLAND: Yeah, I mean, that's exactly what I was going to say, Sozzi. Like, you know, it's-- we are now, what, 13 days away from him becoming a private citizen, a little bit less than that, because it's noon on the 20th, of him being a private citizen. And then, where do you go from there? They ban and block private citizens all the time. So it's certainly a different ball game for these platforms when you are no longer a sitting president, a discussion I know we will not be dropping in the year ahead.