Meta on Wednesday triggered the ire of Donald Trump after the company announced that it will reinstate the former president’s Facebook and Instagram accounts in the coming weeks.
“FACEBOOK, which has lost Billions of Dollars in value since ‘deplatforming’ your favorite President, me, has just announced that they are reinstating my account. Such a thing should never again happen to a sitting President, or anybody else who is not deserving of retribution!” he wrote.
The company had handed down a two-year ban on Trump’s accounts in the wake of the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection, a suspension that the company called “unprecedented.”
But the company determined that the public risk that had surfaced on Jan. 6, 2021, had receded enough to allow the former president back onto the platform.
Now it will unlock the accounts in the coming weeks, after determining that the public risk that had surfaced on Jan. 6, 2021, had receded enough to allow the former president back onto the platform, Meta’s President for Global Affairs Nick Clegg said on Twitter.
“Our determination is that the risk has sufficiently receded, and that we should therefore adhere to the two-year timeline we set out,” the company said.
However, Meta will apply heightened penalties for future offenses of its user guidelines, according to a release from the company on Wednesday.
Meta’s Oversight Board, which is the body that makes content moderation decisions on Facebook and Instagram, said it had no role in deciding whether to allow Trump back on the sites.
“Today’s decision to reinstate Mr. Trump on Meta’s platforms sat with Meta alone — the Board did not have a role in the decision,” the board said.
The reinstatements from Facebook and Instagram come after his Twitter account was reinstated in November after Elon Musk took over the platform.
