How Facebook and Twitter decided to take down Trump's accounts

Mark Zuckerberg started to consider indefinitely suspending President Donald Trump's Facebook account late on the night of Jan. 6, just hours after a mob of Trump's supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol.

Zuckerberg, Facebook's CEO, for years had taken a mostly hands-off approach to Trump's false and incendiary claims, championing free expression and the newsworthiness of his statements as a growing chorus of critics outside and inside the company called for him to take more aggressive action.

But after a series of conversations with his top lieutenants — including Chief Operating...