Over two years after “indefinitely” banning Donald Trump, tech giant Meta plans to reinstate the former president on Facebook and Instagram “in the coming weeks,” Meta’s parent company announced Wednesday.
Trump’s recovery will come “with new guardrails to prevent repeat mistakes,” Nick Clegg, the company’s president of global affairs, said in a press release.
“Mr. Trump is in compliance with our Community Standards,” Clegg wrote. “As such, he will now also face higher penalties for repeat violations – fines that will apply to other public figures whose accounts have been reinstated from suspensions related to civil unrest according to the updated protocol.”
“If Mr Trump posts more offending content, that content will be removed and he will be suspended for between one month and two years, depending on the severity of the offence,” Clegg continued.
The Trump 2024 campaign has increased its lobbying efforts to regain control of various social media profiles, almost all of which were suspended after they were used to coordinate and cause deadly riots in the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, in an attempt to reverse the results of his 2020 election defeat.
In a letter to Meta Platforms Inc. in mid-January, the campaign said Trump’s Facebook ban had “dramatically affected and stifled public discourse.”
“Every day that President Trump’s political voice remains silent increases his inappropriate interference in the American political and electoral process,” added the letter, a copy of which was obtained by NBC News.
Don’t expect any more rigorous fact-checking of this incredible liar. Facebook rules specifically exempt elected officials and political candidates from fact-checking.
But if the social media platform follows all policies, Trump would theoretically have a shorter leash than he enjoyed last year. Clegg, then vice president of global affairs at Facebook, promised in 2021 to take action against Trump if he again poses a risk to public safety when he returns.
“When the suspension is finally lifted,” Clegg wrote, “there will be strict sanctions that will be imposed quickly if Mr. Trump commits further violations in the future, up to and including the permanent removal of pages and accounts.”
In a classic bit of false bravado, Trump said in mid-January that Meta was more interested in having people back than the other way around, telling Fox News that his absence had cost the company $700 billion.
“If they take us back, it will help them, and I’m fine with that,” Trump said. “But they need us more than we need them.”
Claims to the contrary, the former president seems desperate to rejoin the social media. In July 2021, he sued Facebook, Twitter and YouTube for cutting him, asking for account recovery and “potentially trillions of dollars” in damages. Legal experts cast doubt on the merits of the suit.
Facebook’s decision to back Trump is like Twitter’s. The company returned the account at the end of 2022 on the decree of Elon Musk, who recently became CEO.
Trump hasn’t tweeted since then, however. They are contractually obligated to post anything on Truth Social, their self-contained social media company, for at least 6 hours before they can repost it anywhere else.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.