Meta has announced that it will lift its two-year ban on Donald Trump’s accounts, allowing him to rejoin Facebook and Instagram.
The social media behemoth has promised that the ban will be lifted “in the coming weeks.”
Nick Clegg, president of global affairs at Meta, issued a statement in which he argued that people “should be able to hear what their politicians are saying.”
After the riot in the Capitol in 2021, the US president at the time was told he could never use Facebook or Instagram again.
Following Mr. Trump’s “praise for people engaged in violence at the Capitol,” the company had taken action, Mr. Clegg said.
- Musk reverses Trump’s Twitter suspension.
- A launch event is held for Trump’s social media site
“The suspension was a very unusual choice made in a very unusual situation,” he said.
He said that after a review, it was found that Mr. Trump’s accounts were no longer a serious threat to public safety.
But because Mr. Trump has made “violations” in the past, he would now face harsher punishments if he broke the law again.
As Mr. Trump gets ready to run for president again next year, Republicans have been pushing for him to be able to get back on Facebook.
In response, Mr. Trump wrote on Wednesday on his own social media site, Truth Social, that Facebook had “lost billions” by banning “your favorite president, me. This should never happen again to a President in office or to anyone else who doesn’t deserve it,” he wrote.
Donald Trump needs to decide what to do next as Truth Social, which he started in 2021, has a lot fewer users than Facebook.
There are 3 billion people who use Facebook. Truth Social may have around five million accounts, although it’s likely that there are far fewer active users.
Mr. Trump has an agreement with Truth Social that says he has to post on that platform first, six hours before he can post on any other platform. Analysts also say that Truth Social would have a hard time staying alive if Mr. Trump stopped using it or posted content somewhere else.
But as he wants to run for president, he needs to be on Facebook, which is the most popular social media site in the world.
Twitter also banned the former president, but in November, Elon Musk, who now owns Twitter, said that Mr. Trump’s account ban had been lifted. This was after a poll showed that users were mostly in favor of the change.
