Following a two-year ban, former U.S. President Donald Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts will be reinstated by Meta “in coming weeks,” Axios is reporting.
Trump’s social media accounts were suspended soon after the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol for breaking their rules and over fears of further incitement to violence.
Meta’s decision to unblock Trump’s accounts sets a new precedent for how the company treats world leaders, which could also affect the 2024 U.S. presidential election.
“We’ve always believed that Americans should be able to hear from the people who want to lead the country,” said Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs.
“We don’t want to stand in the way of that.”
Trump was not briefed on the decision to lift his suspension before it was made public, Clegg said. He noted that the company will “always make ourselves available to explain and emphasize the policies that we’ve laid out.”
His accounts will not be reinstated immediately, Clegg said, because Meta’s engineers will need time to build out some of the new functionality necessary to restrict certain posts or ad capabilities in the future, if needed.
Following the reinstatement of his social media accounts:
Once reinstated on Facebook and Instagram, Trump will be subject to new policies around restricting accounts by public figures during civil unrest.
