Meta has announced a plan to roll back restrictions on former US President Donald Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts, as the presumptive Republican nominee seeks to regain the White House in November.
The social media company headed by Mark Zuckerberg had indefinitely suspended Trump’s accounts following his praise of people who joined the deadly storming of the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.
His accounts were reinstated in February 2023 but with a threat of penalties for future breaches – an additional restriction that Meta lifted on Friday.
“In assessing our responsibility to allow political expression, we believe that the American people should be able to hear from the nominees for President on the same basis,” Meta wrote in a blog post.
It added that US presidential candidates “remain subject to the same Community Standards as all Facebook and Instagram users, including those policies designed to prevent hate speech and incitement to violence”.
The Biden campaign criticised Meta’s decision.
“Putting Donald Trump back on Facebook is like handing your car keys to someone you know will drive your car into a crowd and off a cliff,” said campaign spokesperson Charles Kretchmer Lutvak.
Trump’s Facebook profile has 34 million followers. His campaign regularly reposts messages originally published on Truth Social, as well as invitations to rallies and videos from his campaign.
Trump has yet to issue a statement on Facebook regarding Meta’s move. His latest Facebook posts assailed Biden and questioned the president’s capacity to run for re-election.
Trump was also banned from Twitter, now called X, in 2021.
Billionaire Elon Musk restored Trump’s account on X, formerly Twitter, shortly after buying the company in 2022, although the former president has only posted once since then.
Musk himself signalled support for Trump, donating to a political committee working to help the former president defeat Biden, according to a Bloomberg report on Friday.
It is unclear how much Musk donated to the group supporting Trump, but Bloomberg quoted anonymous sources as saying that the amount was “sizeable”.
The donation highlights the “growing influence of a technology mogul” on the US political scene, Bloomberg reported, with his conspicuous shift from being independent to being critical of the Democratic Party.
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