After a two-year ban from all Meta social media platforms, Donald Trump will be reinstated by Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram.
He was banned by the company a day after the January 6th capital attack that happened in 2021. Facebook had to make an extraordinary decision in that circumstance to kick him off the platform, criticising him for cheering the January 6th riots and saying after two years, there would be a review to determine if the ban should be lifted.
Now it is exactly two years since the ban, and the former president, via his team, sent a letter to Meta’s CEO asking that he be reinstated into the platform due to his aspirations to run again in 2024 and that the platform will play a vital role in his campaign by running his targeted ads that help raise funds for the campaign, as there is no more social media tool for political targeted ads that is as effective as Facebook.
Nick Clegg Meta’s President of Global Affairs, had this to say concerning Trump’s reinstatement: “We’ve determined that the risk has reduced substantially, so we should stick to the two-year timeline we established. So, in the upcoming weeks, we will reinstate Mr. Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts. To prevent repeat offences, we are doing this while putting new guardrails in place.”
In summary, they are putting him back on the platform under probation to see if he can follow the rules laid out for him. These guardrails are:
- Limiting distribution of election denial posts from his account.
- Temporarily restrict access to advertising tools for the conspiracy theory post.
- Remove the re-share button for violations.
- If he continues to make posts that violate the content moderation policy, he may be suspended for another month to two years.
Meta is not the first social media platform to let the US ex-President back online, as Twitter did so the previous year, although he has decided not to tweet or engage the platform up until now.
Social media platforms have been of great use to the former president’s political journey. Back in 2016 and 2020, Trump used Facebook extensively to raise money and advertise for his campaign.
With how important these social media tools are to his campaign and the rules attached to using them, the ball is in his court. He can either choose to ignore these rules and risk losing his Facebook and Instagram voice for years or adhere to them and use this tool to fuel his campaign. Which do you think will be his choice? Let us know what you think in the comments.
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Photo by Darren Halstead
