Following a two-year suspension following the deadly Capitol Hill riot on January 6, 2021, Meta Platforms Inc META.O announced on Wednesday that it will reinstate former US President Donald Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts in the upcoming weeks.
Trump declared in November that he would run again for the presidency in 2024.
On Facebook and Instagram, two major channels for political funding and outreach, Trump has 34 million and 23 million followers, respectively.
The social media firm claimed in a blog post that it has “installed new guardrails to discourage repeat infractions.”
According to the severity of the breach, Mr. Trump will be suspended for between one month and two years if he continues to upload offensive material, stated Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of international relations, in the blog post.
The world’s largest social media company, Meta, which until the Trump suspension had never blocked the account of a sitting head of state for breaking its content guidelines, made the divisive decision to ban Trump.
After taking down two of his posts from the Capitol Hill riots, including a video in which he repeated his bogus allegation of massive voting fraud during the 2020 presidential election, the firm permanently disabled Trump’s access to his Facebook and Instagram accounts.
Following that, it sent the matter to its independent review panel, which reached the conclusion that the suspension was appropriate but that its indefinite character was not. In response, Meta stated that after two years of the suspension, it would be reviewed.
In a blog post published on Wednesday, Meta hinted that it would reinstate other suspended accounts, including those that had been sanctioned for taking part in social unrest. The business stated that those accounts that were reinstated will be subject to stricter scrutiny and fines for infractions.
