Meta: Trump's Facebook, Instagram Accounts Will Be Reinstated in 'Coming Weeks' After Two-Year Ban
22:23 GMT 25.01.2023 (Updated: 09:37 GMT 18.09.2024)
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Tech giant Meta* announced on Wednesday that following a review of the case, it would be reinstating the Facebook and Instagram accounts of former US President Donald Trump.
Trump's accounts on Facebook and Instagram would be reinstated more than two years after the January 6, 2021, insurrection by his followers that resulted in the suspension of his accounts on several social media sites.
"The suspension was an extraordinary decision taken in extraordinary circumstances," Meta said in a Wednesday news release. "The normal state of affairs is that the public should be able to hear from a former President of the United States, and a declared candidate for that office again, on our platforms. Now that the time period of the suspension has elapsed, the question is not whether we choose to reinstate Mr. Trump’s accounts, but whether there remain such extraordinary circumstances that extending the suspension beyond the original two-year period is justified."
The tech company noted that Trump is a user of their sites just like anybody else, and would face "heightened penalties for repeat offenses" for violating the rules.
"In the event that Mr. Trump posts further violating content, the content will be removed and he will be suspended for between one month and two years, depending on the severity of the violation," it added.
Trump's accounts on Facebook and Instagram, as well on social media site Twitter, were suspended on January 7, 2021, a day after thousands of his followers stormed the US Capitol Building in Washington, DC, in an attempt to overturn the results of the November 2020 election. The insurrection happened immediately after Trump gave a speech to his followers outside the White House in which he accused Democratic rival Joe Biden of winning the election through fraud and told the rallygoers to "Stop the Steal."
The social media sites said Trump had violated their rules against inciting violence by seeming to encourage the insurrectionists with supportive posts during the attack.
After Trump was banned, he started his own social media service called "Truth Social."
Last week, Trump's legal team mounted an effort to regain control over his Facebook account for use in the coming 2024 presidential race, for which Trump has already declared himself a candidate. They argued that since Meta later decided to shorten his lifetime ban to a two-year ban with review afterward, that Trump's account should be reinstated.
The former president reacted to the Wednesday development on his Truth Social platform, commenting that "such a thing should never again happen to a sitting president, or anybody else who is not deserving of retribution."
Trump already has control over his Twitter account, which Twitter's new owner, Elon Musk, unbanned following his acquisition of the company last October. However, at the time Trump dismissed the idea he would return to the messaging platform.
After Musk's takeover, he also began giving journalists access to Twitter files about a number of free speech-related incidents over the years, revealing that Twitter employees struggled to build a case for Trump's suspension and that might not have actually broken their rules.
*Facebook, Instagram, and their parent company Meta are recognized as extremist and banned in the Russian Federation
