Meta is allowing Donald Trump to return to Facebook and Instagram
'The public should be able to hear what their politicians are saying.'
Meta will reinstate the Facebook and Instagram accounts of Donald Trump in the next few weeks after a two-year suspension.
“The public should be able to hear what their politicians are saying – the good, the bad and the ugly,” said Meta’s president of global affairs, Nick Clegg, who was previously the leader of the Liberal Democrats party in the UK.
Trump was originally suspended from the platforms following the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021, and “his praise for people engaged in violence”. Twitter followed suit a day later but reinstated the former president last year after Elon Musk took over the platform.
➡️ The Shortcut Skinny: Trump back Facebook
👨🦰 Donald Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts will be reinstated
⛔ The former president was originally banned from the platforms for praising those involved in the Capitol attack in 2021
🛑 His account will return with added guardrails to prevent similar violations of the platform’s user standards
🐤 Trump was invited back to Twitter last year but is yet to return
Clegg said Trump’s suspension from Facebook and Instagram was “an extraordinary decision taken in extraordinary circumstances”, but his account no longer represents a serious risk to public safety.
Meta said Trump’s accounts will have “new guardrails in place to deter repeat offense”. Trump will face heightened penalties for repeat offenses, and suspension between one month and two years if he posts further content that violates Meta’s community standards.
In other circumstances, the reach of his posts may be deliberately limited, meaning they would remain visible on Trump’s account but not distributed to users’ feeds, and the reshare button could be removed from some of his posts.
“In the event that Mr. Trump posts content that violates the letter of the [Meta’s] Community Standards but, under our newsworthy content policy, we assess there is a public interest in knowing that Mr. Trump made the statement that outweighs any potential harm, we may similarly opt to restrict the distribution of such posts but leave them visible on Mr. Trump’s account,” Clegg said.
“As a general rule, we don’t want to get in the way of open, public and democratic debate on Meta’s platforms – especially in the context of elections in democratic societies like the United States,” he added.
Trump responded to the news on his own right-wing platform, Truth Social, saying: "FACEBOOK, which has lost Billions of Dollars in value since 'deplatforming' your favorite President, me, has just announced that they are reinstating my account.
“Such a thing should never again happen to a sitting President, or anybody else who is not deserving of retribution!" he wrote.
Despite being invited back last year, Trump hasn’t yet returned to Twitter saying he prefers his own tiny platform, which doesn’t so much function as a normal social media platform, but more like an online portal that he can shout through.