Former President Donald Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts are being reinstated, social media giant Meta announced Wednesday, just over two years after he was suspended from the platforms for inflammatory posts about the January 6 riots in the Capitol.
Trump’s accounts will be reinstated “in the coming weeks” and will come with “new safeguards to prevent repeat offenses,” Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs, said in a statement. Meta owns Facebook and Instagram.
Those safeguards will include “increased penalties for repeat offenses, penalties that will apply to other public figures whose accounts are reinstated from civil unrest-related suspensions under our updated protocol. Should Mr. Trump post more violative content, the content will be removed and will be suspended from one month to two years, depending on the severity of the infringement.” Clegg said on the company website.
Trump celebrated the announcement on his Truth Social social media platform.
“FACEBOOK, which has lost billions of dollars in value since I ‘de-platformed’ its favorite president, me, has just announced that they are reinstating my account. Something like this should never happen again to a sitting president, or to no one who doesn’t deserve it.” of retribution!” he wrote.
When asked why Meta was reinstating Trump despite recent inflammatory posts on Truth Social, Clegg told NBC News that the company wanted to handle censorship concerns carefully.
“We’re not trying to, you know, censor everything that everybody says in a free and open democracy,” Clegg said in an interview with Hallie Jackson. the debate should take place on Facebook and Instagram as much as anywhere else.”
Clegg said Meta has shown a willingness to “draw a very sharp line,” knowing that what is posted on Facebook and Instagram can cause real-world harm, and that the company “will act, and we have acted.”
Asked if an effort by Trump to delegitimize an election by lying about it would lead to another suspension, Clegg suggested that he would not, unless it clearly leads to “actual and imminent harm.” Instead, he said the company would “take steps to restrict the circulation of that content.”
Meta’s decision to lift Trump’s suspension comes weeks after Facebook gave itself a deadline to reassess the 2021 ban, and shortly after Republicans, many of whom have criticized Facebook’s decision, took back control of the House of Representatives.
Then-House Minority Leader, and now Speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy promised “restrain great technological power over our speech” after Facebook announced the length of Trump’s suspension in 2021.
The Trump presidential campaign officially requested the social media giant to allow Trump back on the platform earlier this month.
“We believe that the ban on President Trump’s Facebook account has dramatically distorted and inhibited public discourse,” the Trump campaign wrote in its Jan. 17 letter to Meta, according to a copy of the letter reviewed by NBC News.
A Trump aide, who spoke to NBC earlier this month on condition of anonymity, said the former president’s campaign was prepared to turn to allies in the House to pressure Facebook if necessary.
“If Facebook wants to have this fight, that’s fine, but the House has clout, and keeping Trump off Facebook just seems political,” the adviser said.
Clegg told NBC News that “there have been no discussions” with the Trump team regarding his reinstatement, “nor should there be.”
Facebook announced in June 2021 that it would ban Trump from Facebook and Instagram until at least January 2023 for a “serious violation of our rules” stemming from his role in the January 6 riots.
The accounts were first suspended after Trump offered warm words to the rioters in a pair of messages while asking them to go home, calling them “very special” and “great patriots.”
“These are the things and events that happen when a hallowed landslide election victory is unceremoniously and viciously robbed of great patriots who have been wronged for so long. He comes home with love in peace. Remember this day forever!” he said in one of the posts.
Initially, the ban was scheduled to last 24 hours, but it was extended to the end of his term by Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, who said that “the risks of allowing the president to continue to use our service during this period are simply too great.”
“Therefore, we are extending the block we have placed on your Facebook and Instagram accounts indefinitely and for at least the next two weeks until the peaceful transition of power is complete,” Zuckerberg wrote.
The company’s quasi-independent Oversight Board later said the site did the right thing in banning Trump, but also found that there were inappropriately varied of his normal penalties when he made the indefinite ban.
Clegg later announced that the ban would last until at least January of this year.
“At the end of this period, we will seek experts to assess whether the risk to public safety has decreased. We will assess external factors, including instances of violence, restrictions on peaceful assembly, and other indicators of civil unrest. If we determine that a serious risk to public safety still exists, we will extend the restriction for a set period of time and continue to reassess until that risk has subsided,” he said in June 2021.