After being suspended for two years as a result of the uprising on January 6, Facebook parent company Meta is reactivating former US president Donald Trump’s personal account.
To ensure that there are no “repeat offenders” who disobey its regulations, Meta’s president of global affairs; Nick Clegg stated in a blog post on Wednesday adding that it is implementing “additional guardrails.”
“Like any other Facebook or Instagram user, Mr. Trump is subject to our community standards.
“In the event that Mr. Trump posts further violating content, the content will be removed and he will be suspended for between one month and two years, depending on the severity of the violation,” Clegg wrote.
Requests for comment on the choice were not immediately answered by Mr. Trump’s spokesperson.
Trump was suspended from the platform on January 7, 2021, a day after the violent uprising in Capitol when Trump posted unsupported assertions that the election had been rigged, encouraged increasingly violent protestors, and denounced former vice president Mike Pence even as the mob threatened his life.
Clegg said the suspension was “an extraordinary decision taken in extraordinary circumstances” and that Meta has weighed “whether there remain such extraordinary circumstances that extending the suspension beyond the original two-year period is justified”.
Ultimately, the company has decided that its platforms should be available for “open, public and democratic debate” and that users “should be able to hear from a former President of the United States, and a declared candidate for that office again”, he wrote.
“The public should be able to hear what their politicians are saying – the good, the bad, and the ugly – so that they can make informed choices at the ballot box,” he said.
He was removed from other social media platforms as well, though Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter recently led to his reinstatement.
But he didn’t tweet.
Mr. Trump, who has been prohibited from using popular social media, has been depending on his own, much more modest website, Truth Social, which he created after being denied access to Twitter.
