Meta Platforms announced Wednesday that it will reactivate former US President Donald Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts in the coming weeks following a two-year suspension following the deadly Capitol Hill riot on Jan. 6, 2021.
The restoration of his accounts could give a boost to Trump, who announced in November that he would run for the White House again in 2024. He has 34 million followers FacebookPlatforms that are important tools for political outreach and fundraising.
His Twitter Account restored by new owner in November Elon Muskalthough Trump card still have to post there.
Free speech advocates say it’s appropriate for the public to have access to messages from political candidates, but Meta critics have accused the company of having a lax moderation policy.
Meta said in a blog entry On Wednesday it “set up new guard rails to deter repeat offenders”.
“If Mr. Trump continues to post infringing content, the content will be removed and banned for between one month and two years, depending on the severity of the violation,” wrote Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs. in the blog post.
While the decision was widely expected, it drew sharp reprimands from civil rights activists. “Facebook has policies, but they don’t enforce them,” said Laura Murphy, a lawyer who led a two-year audit of Facebook that ended in 2020. “I worry about Facebook’s ability to understand the damage Trump is doing in the real world: Facebook has been too slow to act.”
The Anti-Defamation League, NAACP, Free Press and other groups also expressed concern Wednesday about Facebook’s ability to deter future attacks on the democratic process, with Trump still repeating his false claim that he won the 2020 presidential election .
Others said it was the right decision.
Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University and a former ACLU official, defended the reinstatement. He previously endorsed the company’s decision to suspend Trump’s account.
“The public has an interest in hearing directly from candidates for political office,” Jaffer said. “It’s better if the major social media platforms make the mistake of leaving the speech, even if the speech is offensive or false, so it can be addressed by other users and other institutions.”
Other reactivations?
The decision to ban Trump polarized Meta, the world’s largest social media company, which had never suspended an incumbent leader’s account for violating its content rules prior to Trump’s suspension.
The company indefinitely revoked Trump’s access to his Facebook and Instagram accounts after removing two of his posts during the Capitol Hill violence, including a video making his false claim about widespread voter fraud during the presidential election 2020 repeated.
She then referred the case to her independent regulator, which ruled that the suspension was warranted but the vagueness was not. In response, Meta said it would reconsider the suspension two years after it began.
Meta’s blog post on Wednesday hinted that it could reactivate other suspended accounts, including those penalized for their involvement in civil unrest. The company said those recovered accounts would be subject to stricter review and penalties for violators.
Whether and how Trump will take the opportunity to return to Facebook and Instagram is unclear.
Trump has not sent any new tweets since regaining his account on Twitter and said he would prefer to stick with his own app, Truth Social. But his campaign spokesman told Fox News Digital last week that returning to Facebook “will be an important tool for the 2024 campaign to reach voters.”
In a post on Truth Social, Trump responded to his reinstatement at Meta-Apps, saying, “Nothing like this should ever happen again to an incumbent president, or anyone else who doesn’t deserve retribution!” He didn’t specify if or when he would be back would start posting on meta platforms.
Rep. Adam Schiff, a Democrat who previously headed the House Intelligence Committee, criticized the decision to reinstate him.
“Trump started a riot,” Schiff wrote on Twitter. “Giving him back access to a social media platform to spread his lies and demagogy is dangerous.”
© Thomson Reuters 2023
