Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
NEW YORK — Donald Trump is back on Facebook and Instagram as of Thursday, two years after being banned for his postings related to the U.S. Capitol insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021. His renewed access to these platforms will give him the opportunity to raise funds and awareness for his 2024 presidential campaign.
Trump also got his Twitter account restored in November. He has yet to post on any of these platforms, but his campaign's petition to Meta, Facebook and Instagram's parent company, to reinstate his accounts and his significant use of Facebook ads in past elections suggest that social media users will be hearing from him at some point.
Meta to reinstate Donald Trump's Facebook and Instagram accounts
Meta Platforms said Wednesday it will reinstate former U.S. President Donald Trump's Facebook and Instagram accounts in the coming weeks, following a two-year suspension after the deadly Capitol Hill riot on January 6, 2021."We believe that the ban on President Trump's account on Facebook has dramatically distorted and inhibited the public discourse," the campaign's letter read, according to NBC.
The former president was well known for using social media to his advantage. When running for president in 2019, he outspent all his opponents to build a "sophisticated" Facebook campaign, The Guardian reported.
"It is the most important vehicle for fundraising and for reaching a lot of people in the persuadable audience," a Trump adviser said of Facebook, per CNN.
The suspensions of his accounts were supposed to last two years, assuming his online presence no longer posed a threat large enough to justify extending the block.
"Our determination is that the risk has sufficiently receded and that we should therefore adhere to the two-year timeline we set out," Meta president Nick Clegg wrote in a statement last month.
Clegg explained the company's belief that free speech on the internet is part of living in a "free society."
"We default to letting people speak, even when what they have to say is distasteful or factually wrong. Democracy is messy and people should be able to make their voices heard," he wrote. The statement also mentioned Trump's candidacy, saying people should be able to hear from those who are running for president.
Meta said Trump will be subject to newly instated guardrails on the platforms. He will face "heightened penalties for repeated offenses," and the company will suspend him again if it is warranted. Protocols have been updated to keep public figures in check.
During his years of inactivity on Facebook and Instagram, Trump has been using his own, lesser known platform called Truth Social, on which he has less than 5 million followers. That's compared to 23 million on Instagram, 34 million on Facebook, and 87 million on Twitter.
