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San Francisco (AFP) – The giant Meta company announced Wednesday that it intends to soon allow former US President Donald Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts to be reactivated, two years after they were banned in the wake of the 2021 attack by supporters of the Republican president on the Capitol building.
“We will be reactivating Mr. Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts in the coming weeks,” said a statement from Nick Clegg, META’s head of international affairs, adding that this would be accompanied by “new safeguards” to prevent repeat breaches.
Going forward, Clegg noted, the Republican leader’s account could be suspended for up to two years for each violation of the platform’s policies.
It was not clear when or if Trump, who has announced his third run for president, would like to return to the platforms, and his representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
But the 76-year-old billionaire claimed with great bravado that his absence had led to Facebook losing “billions of dollars” in value.
And Trump warned on his “Truth Social” website that “something like this should not happen again to a president during his term, or to any other person who does not deserve punishment.”
And Facebook banned Trump a day after the January 6, 2021 rebellion, when a group of his supporters tried to prevent Joe Biden from being inaugurated as president by storming the Capitol building in Washington.
The former reality TV star and real estate mogul spent weeks promoting allegations that the presidential election was stolen from him, and later went on trial for inciting riots.
Trump’s attorney, Scott Gast, sent a letter to Meta last week requesting a meeting to discuss Trump’s “immediate reinstatement of the platform,” which has 34 million followers, on the grounds that his status as a major contender for the Republican presidential nomination justifies ending the ban.
He also said that Meta Group had “dramatically distorted and suppressed public discourse”.
American Civil Liberties Union executive director Anthony Romero said Mita is “making the right decision” to allow Trump back on Facebook and Instagram.
“Like it or not, President Trump is one of the prominent political figures in the country and the public has a great interest in hearing his speech,” the latter added in a statement.
In fact, some of Trump’s most offensive social media posts have ended up being crucial evidence in lawsuits against him and his administration.
The American Civil Liberties Union has filed more than 400 lawsuits against Trump, according to Romero.
An engine of extremism?
However, some organizations, such as Media Matters for America, are strongly against allowing Trump to use the space on Facebook to influence users.
“Make no mistake,” said the organization’s president, Angelo Carusone. “By allowing Donald Trump to return to their platforms, Meta is fueling Trump’s engine of disinformation and extremism.”
“Not only will this have an impact on Instagram and Facebook users, but it also represents intense threats to civil society and an existential threat to US democracy as a whole,” he added.
Last December, a US congressional committee recommended that Trump be prosecuted for his role in the attack on the Capitol.
Trump’s Twitter account, which has 88 million followers, was banned immediately after the riots, prompting the Republican to reach out to his supporters via his own platform, Truth Social, where he has fewer than five million followers.
Some of the credit for Trump’s surprising victory in the 2016 presidential election goes to his massive influence on social media.
Andrew Celebak, a professor of social networks at the University of Florida, believes Facebook does not want to antagonize or alienate pro-Trump parliamentarians who might protest if he stays off the platform any longer.
“Trump needs the platform to raise money and Facebook does not want to be subpoenaed in Congress,” Celebak wrote on Twitter.
Conservative Republicans in Congress were outraged by the ban on Trump’s Facebook account, while a group of congressional Democrats last month urged Mita to extend the ban to keep “dangerous and gratuitous election disapproval content off its platform.”
The new owner of Twitter, Elon Musk, also reactivated Trump’s account on the platform last November, days after the former president announced his decision to run for the presidency, but he has not posted any tweets yet.
© 2023 AFP