Meta to reinstate Trump’s account on its platforms

• President Trump is one of the country’s leading political figures.
• The ACLU has filed over 400 legal actions against Trump.
• He was barred for two years  from using the platforms due to the 2021 US Capitol insurgency.

SAN FRANCISCO: Meta, the social networking giant, announced Tuesday that it would soon reinstate former President Donald Trump‘s accounts on Facebook and Instagram with “new guardrails,” two years after he was barred from using the platforms due to the 2021 US Capitol insurgency.

“We will be reinstating Mr. Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts in the coming weeks,” Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs, said in a statement, adding that the move would come with “new guardrails in place to deter repeat offenses.”

Clegg stated that the Republican leader, who has already declared himself a presidential candidate for 2024, could be suspended for up to two years for each violation of platform policies in the future.

It was unclear when or if Trump would return to the platforms, and his representatives did not respond to a request for comment immediately.

However, the 76-year-old tycoon responded in typically bullish fashion, claiming that Facebook had lost “billions of dollars in value” while he was gone.

“Such a thing should never happen again to a sitting President, or anyone else who is undeserving of retribution!” he declared on his Truth Social platform.

Facebook banned Trump a day after a mob of his supporters stormed the US Capitol in Washington on January 6, 2021, seeking to prevent the certification of his election defeat to Joe Biden.

The former reality television star had spent weeks falsely claiming that the presidential election had been stolen from him, and he was later impeached for inciting the riot.

Trump’s lawyer Scott Gast said last week in a letter asking for the ban to be lifted that Meta had “dramatically distorted and inhibited public discourse.”

He requested a meeting to discuss Trump’s “immediate reinstatement to the platform” of Facebook, where he had 34 million followers, arguing that his position as the Republican nominee in 2024 justified it.

Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said Meta was making “the right decision” by reintroducing Trump to the social network.

“Whether you like it or not, President Trump is one of the country’s leading political figures, and the public is eager to hear his speech,” Romero said in a statement.

“In fact, some of Trump’s most inflammatory social media posts were used as critical evidence in lawsuits filed against him and his administration.”

According to Romero, the ACLU has filed over 400 legal actions against Trump.

Extremism engine?

However, advocacy groups such as Media Matters for America are vehemently opposed to Trump using Facebook’s social networking reach.

“Make no mistake: by reintroducing Donald Trump to its platforms, Meta is refueling Trump’s misinformation and extremism engine,” Media Matters president Angelo Carusone said.

“Not only will this affect Instagram and Facebook users, but it also poses increased threats to civil society and an existential threat to US democracy as a whole.”

In December, a US congressional committee recommended that Trump be prosecuted for his role in the US Capitol attack.

After the riot, his Twitter account, which has 88 million followers, was also blocked, forcing him to communicate through Truth Social, which has fewer than five million followers.

Trump’s unexpected victory in 2016 was attributed in part to his use of social media and his vast digital reach.

According to Andrew Selepak, a social media professor at the University of Florida, Facebook does not want to go to war with Trump’s congressional supporters, who are likely to protest if he is barred from using the platform.

“Trump needs the platform for fundraising, and Facebook doesn’t want to testify in front of Congress,” Selepak wrote on Twitter.

Conservative republican leaders have raged against Trump being booted from Facebook, while a group of Democrats in Congress last month urged Meta to extend the ban to keep “dangerous and unfounded election denial content off its platform.”

New Twitter owner Elon Musk reinstated Trump’s account last November, days after Trump announced a fresh White House run. He has yet to post.

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