Former US president Donald Trump was banned from Facebook and Instagram in January 2021 due to his ‘praise for people engaged in violence at the Capitol’
(Picture: AP)Meta has confirmed plans to reinstate Donald Trump’s social media profiles “in the coming weeks”.
This affects Trump’s Instagram and Facebook accounts, which are part of the Meta family.
This plan was outlined in a blog post by former deputy prime minister of the UK, Nick Clegg, who is president of global affairs at Meta.
Why is Meta reinstating Trump’s Facebook account?
Why now? There are a couple of reasons. Trump announced he plans to stand in the 2024 US elections, giving his words — however deranged — renewed relevance.
“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,” Clegg wrote.
He also explained that time is effectively up on the original ban term, which was imposed in January 2021 following the Capitol riots. Meta had acted following Mr Trump’s “praise for people engaged in violence at the Capitol”, Clegg said.
“We imposed a time-bound suspension of two years from the date of the original suspension on January 7, 2021,” he wrote. “In our response to the Oversight Board, we also said that before making any decision on whether or not to lift Mr Trump’s suspension, we would assess whether the risk to public safety has receded.”
The Oversight board is an independent body formed in 2018 to guide Facebook and Instagram’s policy. It has now agreed the threat posed by Trump has now sufficiently receded to let him back on Facebook.
What is Truth Social?
Trump’s exclusivity deal with Truth Social is set to expire in June. Truth Social is a social network established by Trump Media & Technology Group that claims not to discriminate on the “basis of political ideology”. It has an estimated two million users, while Trump has 87.7 million followers on Twitter.
A more cynical reading of Meta’s timing here is that it could encourage Trump not to extend his exclusivity contract with Truth Social. This would show Trump is good for business in the eyes of social networks such as Facebook and Twitter.
Trump’s Truth Social deal says he has to post content on the platform at least six hours before any other network — a timescale that might as well be a year given the scattershot nature of his posts.
It has been widely suggested Trump plans to ditch this exclusivity clause in June. At that point, he is likely to have live Twitter, Facebook and Instagram accounts. Twitter reinstated Trump’s account in November 2022.
How could Trump get banned from Facebook (again)?
Meta’s current policy on posted content that breaks the platform's rules suggests a full ban is unlikely while he is a possible future US president.
Instead, the reach of such incendiary content will be limited by Meta’s moderators. Facebook has several tools here. It can stop content from being shared to people’s feeds, so that posts will be visible only when directly visiting Trump’s profile.
Share buttons can be removed and access to “advertising tools” can be restricted — there are important for a politician looking to widen their reach online.
“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 said.
However, the number of ways Meta can claim to have acted before reaching this stage suggests it will take some fairly egregious behaviour before we see another outright ban of any duration.
“Newsworthiness” is a confounding factor here, and in his Meta blog Clegg admits potentially harmful content may be left online, that it may “restrict the distribution of such posts but leave them visible on Mr. Trump’s account”.
Trump’s full-bore return to mainstream social networks is likely to happen in June. This would be just over half a year before the Republican Party presidential primaries in February 2024.
