Donald Trump at the White House in June 2020. ALEX BRANDON / AP
Donald Trump won his case. Last week, the former US President asked to return to Facebook. Meta, to which the social network belongs, granted his request: the group announced on Wednesday, January 25 that it would end the “ban” on Donald Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts in the coming weeks, two years after expelling the former American President after the attack on the Capitol.
“The public needs to be able to hear what politicians are saying so they can make informed decisions,” Nick Clegg, Meta’s head of international affairs, said in a statement.
“But that doesn’t mean there aren’t limits to what people can say on our platform. If there is a risk of harm in the real world – a high risk that justifies Meta’s intervention in the public debate – we act,” he said.
The former US leader had been banned from the social network on January 7, 2021, while still in power, for encouraging his supporters to make an unprecedented decision during the attack on Congress in Washington the day before time of most popular social networks, including Twitter.
Also, listen to January 6, 2021: the day American democracy faltered
In a press release, the oversight body of Meta, the group of independent figures responsible for commenting on Facebook and Instagram’s moderation decisions, believes the actions taken by Facebook since 2021 and the freezing of Donald’s account are moving Trump in the right direction, but need more transparency be made. ” Decision [de réactiver les comptes de Donald Trump] is a pivotal moment in the debate about dangerous content being published by elected officials,” the oversight body estimated. “As Meta writes, there are different arguments about the limits to be set, and therefore (…) social networks must operate in complete transparency. »
Already resumed on Twitter
In June 2021, Facebook had ruled that the ban would last two years and that the Republican billionaire could not return until “public safety risks” had “disappeared.”
The suspension “should never happen again to an incumbent president or anyone who doesn’t deserve sanctions!” responded Donald Trump from his account on Truth Social, the social network he launched last year.
Donald Trump’s attorney sent a letter to Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s founder and chairman, last week, urging him not to “silence a presidential candidate.”
On November 20, a few weeks after taking over Twitter, billionaire Elon Musk announced that he would reactivate the former US President’s account on this social network – his account had been suspended on January 6, 2021 for “incitement to violence”.
Also read: Article reserved for our subscribers The reactivation of Donald Trump’s Twitter account, a symbolic decision
However, Donald Trump, a compulsive Twitter user throughout his presidency, has not posted anything to his account since its reactivation and communicates primarily through his own platform, Truth Social.
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The billionaire has a few more months to abide by an exclusivity clause that’s part of his agreement with Truth Social: the former president has pledged to only publish his messages on this social network, which caters primarily to American conservatives. Truth Social is already struggling financially and will be in very bad shape by the time Donald Trump starts posting on other networks.
Also Read: Parler, Truth Social, Gab… The Difficult Survival of Far-Right Social Networks