Meta will reinstate Donald Trump on Facebook and Instagram “in the coming weeks”, in a polarizing move that will make a vital platform for the former US president ahead of his bid for the White House in 2024.
Trump, whose use of social media helped him win the presidency in 2016, has been suspended from Meta platforms for the past two years after he praised a group of his supporters who took storming the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.
However, the $371 billion social media company will now allow his return, saying it has put ‘new guardrails in place to deter repeat offenders’, according to its president of global affairs, Nick Clegg, who oversaw decision.
“The public should be able to hear what politicians are saying so they can make informed choices,” Clegg said.
Reinstatement could give Trump a new megaphone to reach his supporters as he begins his campaign for the presidency in 2024, which got off to a rocky start. The former president has 34 million and 23 million followers on his Facebook and Instagram accounts respectively, although he cannot currently post.
It’s unclear if and when Trump, who launched his own rival social media platform, Truth Social, will actually return. His account on meta rival Twitter was reinstated in November by the platform’s new owner, Elon Musk, but he has yet to post on it.
“FACEBOOK, which has lost billions of dollars in value since it ‘deplatformed’ your favorite president, me, just announced it is reinstating my account,” Trump wrote on Truth Social after the announcement. “Such a thing should never again happen to a sitting president, or anyone else who does not deserve retaliation.”
Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung told Fox News Digital last week that Facebook was “an important tool for the 2024 campaign to reach voters through advertising, grassroots engagement and fundraising.”
In 2021, Trump was suspended “indefinitely” the day after the Capitol riots for what Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg described as his decision to “incite a violent insurrection against a democratically elected government.”
That suspension was upheld by Meta’s supervisory board, a Supreme Court-like body of academics and outside experts that assesses challenges to the company’s moderation decisions. However, the council challenged the lifetime ban, ordering Meta to reverse his decision within two years.
Trump’s return to the platform will likely be welcomed by Republicans who say social media platforms have suppressed free speech and deliberately targeted conservatives, the companies say.
However, Meta’s decision will irritate Democrats and online security experts who warn that Trump’s rhetoric can result in real damage.
It comes as social media platforms continue to try to figure out how to deal with controversial speeches and demands from politicians and world leaders.
On Wednesday, Clegg said Trump faced “heavier penalties” for future offenses. For example, if he posts other content that violates the rules, he will be suspended “between one month and two years, depending on the seriousness of the violation,” Clegg said.
Meta could also seek to limit the reach of Trump’s posts that aren’t necessarily rule-breaking but contribute “to the kind of risk that materialized on Jan. 6,” and prevent them from being shared, recommended, or circulated as ads, Clegg added. . This includes content that “delegitimizes an upcoming election” or relates to QAnon, a pro-Trump conspiracy theory.
Clegg said Meta assessed the situation, including “reviewing the conduct of the 2022 U.S. midterm elections and expert assessments of the current security environment” to assess whether the risk to public safety has diminished. since Trump’s initial suspension.
“Our determination is that the risk has receded sufficiently and therefore we must stick to the two-year timetable that we have set,” he said.
