A Maltese company that analyses websites’ data has dumped US president Donald Trump off its platform.
Hotjar's founder and CEO David Darmanin said the company did not want to fuel Trump's "racist and hateful" rhetoric and would be making a €50,000 donation to help fight racism and injustice.
The company founder said it had recently discovered that the Trump campaign was using its platform on an online merchandise shop.
“Upon further investigation, we found that the Hotjar account, which is managed by the Republican National Committee, also includes other GOP-related websites,” Darmanin said in a company blog post.
He said the company prides itself in being “diverse and inclusive, and for standing against racism and injustice”.
“Donald Trump has said racist and hateful things as the evidence that anyone can access on the internet shows, as well as has taken a number of actions that have targeted marginalized groups,” he said.
"The campaign and the Republican party today stand behind a candidate who has made statements that promote racism, division, and discrimination," Darmanin said.
“Therefore, we believe that the values displayed by this organization as a customer of Hotjar are clearly not aligned with our values as a company, and in the spirit of living our value of working with respect, we have decided to take action.”
The company’s use policy has since been updated to not allow sites that promote or condone hate, including those sites that support organisations, platforms or people that do.
The CEO said that the “full €780” earned from the Trump account will be donated to help fight racism and injustice. The company will also be topping this amount up by an additional €50,000, he said. Darmanin did not provide details about the additional donation.
“We generally don’t disclose publicly any information about accounts we terminate, but in this case we feel we owe it to our community to explain where we stand in such a polarizing time. We also want to take the opportunity to invite other tech companies to honour their values and take a firm stance against hate and racism.”
Hotjar was founded in 2014 and is headquartered in Malta, with teams based in 20 other countries.