UPDATED 16:35: Donald Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts have been restored, Meta said today. The news comes two weeks after the social media company announced it would bring the former president back to its platforms, and more than two years after he was suspended indefinitely.
Read more details below.
EARLY January 25: Meta said Wednesday it will reinstate former President Donald Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts two years after his suspension.
The social media giant has made it clear that Trump must abide by the rules of the platforms.
“Normal practice is for the public to hear from our platforms about a former President of the United States and a declared candidate for that office,” said Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs. Blog entry. “Now that the suspension period has expired, the question is not whether we choose to have Mr. restore Trump’s accounts, but whether such exceptional circumstances persist that would justify extending the suspension beyond the original two-year period.”
Trump was suspended from Facebook and Instagram after praising those involved in the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol. The Facebook supervisory board upheld the decision, but criticized the open nature of the suspension. Meta then released a two-year timeline for the suspension, further detailing when public figures could have their accounts cut during times of violence and civil unrest. A protocol has also been drawn up to be able to react more quickly in the event of a crisis.
Clegg wrote that they assessed the risk to public safety and the current security environment and found that “the risk has been sufficiently reduced.”
“As such, we will Mr. Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts will be restored in the coming weeks. However, we are doing this with new guardrails to deter repeat offenders,” Clegg wrote.
The meta announcement follows Twitter’s decision to reinstate Trump’s account under new owner Elon Musk. However, Trump has yet to tweet from the account as he launched his own social media platform, Truth Social. Axios first reported on the recovery of Facebook and Instagram.
Clegg wrote that Trump faces higher penalties for each violation. “If Mr. Trump continues to post infringing content, the content will be removed and he will be suspended for a period of one month to two years, depending on the severity of the violation,” he wrote. Trump may also have other restrictions on the posting of content that does not violate Facebook or Instagram’s community standards, but “contributes to the type of risk that emerged on January 6, such as: B. Content that delegitimizes an upcoming election or with QAnon related.” Such sanctions may include restrictions on message distribution or access to promotional tools.
“Many people believe that companies like Meta should be removing much more content than we currently do,” Clegg wrote. “Others argue that our current policies make us already overbearing censors. The fact of the matter is that people always say everything on the internet. By default, we let people speak, even if what they have to say is distasteful or factually incorrect.”
Trump often posts multiple times a day on Truth Social, but it falls far short of the reach of the major platforms. He has shown no sign of backing down from his wild rhetoric, using a racist term to describe Elaine Chao, his former transportation minister, and continuing to make baseless claims that the 2020 election was rigged.
He posted on Truth Social about the Facebook decision. “FACEBOOK, which has lost billions of dollars in value since it ‘deplatformed’ your favorite president, me, has just announced that they are reactivating my account,” he wrote. “This should never happen again to a sitting president or anyone else who doesn’t deserve retribution!” THANK YOU TRUTH SOCIAL FOR DOING SUCH AN INCREDIBLE JOB. YOUR GROWTH IS EXCELLENT AND THE FUTURE UNLIMITED!!!”
Trump’s deal with Truth Social is that he has a “general obligation” to post there and cannot repost on any other social media site for six hours. But he can always post from any social media site if the content is related to “political posts, political fundraising or polling efforts,” according to a filing with the SEC last year.
The Meta Oversight Board played no role in the decision, the board said in a blog post. While the company noted that it has “made significant progress in implementing the necessary and appropriate penalties for a number of serious violations,” it also called on the company to provide additional details on its updated policy and to to be transparent, and note that whether permissible content is still “a risk of offline harm.”
Source: Deadline
Mary Crossley is an author at “The Fashion Vibes”. She is a seasoned journalist who is dedicated to delivering the latest news to her readers. With a keen sense of what’s important, Mary covers a wide range of topics, from politics to lifestyle and everything in between.
