Meta will restore former U.S. President Donald Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts in the coming weeks, following a two-year suspension after the Jan 6 Capitol Hill riot, Axios reports.
Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs, made the announcement on Wednesday.
“We’ve always believed that Americans should be able to hear from the people who want to lead the country,” Clegg said. “We don’t want to stand in the way of that.”
“We just do not want — if he is to return to our services — for him to do what he did on January 6, which is to use our services to delegitimize the 2024 election, much as he sought to discredit the 2020 election,” he added.
The reinstatement of Trump’s accounts will allow him to run ads via his Facebook and Instagram pages, which have 34 million and 23 million followers, respectively, according to Axios.
Trump’s accounts will not be reinstated immediately, according to Clegg, since Meta’s engineers need time to make upgrades necessary to “restrict certain posts.”
The Meta official also explained Trump could be suspended for a period of one month to two years depending on the “severity of the violation” and that, even if the content does not violate community standards, the 45th U.S. President may still be restricted.
“If he now posts further violating content, that content will be removed, of course, and he could be suspended for between one month and two years, depending on the severity of the violation,” Clegg said. “Oblique references to QAnon content, for instance … is the kind of material that — even if it’s done obliquely, and doesn’t violate our community standards — we would seek to restrict the distribution of the content and/or restrict his ability to advertise.”
Glegg made sure to take responsibility for the decision: “I am the ultimate decision maker on these kinds of issues in the company,” he emphasized.
President Trump responded to the news on his social media platform Truth Social, saying that Facebook has lost value since deplatforming him. He also asserted that such a thing should never happen to a sitting President and thanked Truth Social for doing an “incredible job.”
“FACEBOOK, which has lost Billions of Dollars in value since “deplatforming” your favorite President, me, has just announced that they are reinstating my account,” Trump said. “Such a thing should never again happen to a sitting President, or anybody else who is not deserving of retribution! THANK YOU TO TRUTH SOCIAL FOR DOING SUCH AN INCREDIBLE JOB. YOUR GROWTH IS OUTSTANDING, AND FUTURE UNLIMITED!!!”
