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Meta will let Donald Trump back on Facebook, Instagram

Facebook advertising played a big part in Donald Trump's path to the White House in 2016 - AFP
Facebook advertising played a big part in Donald Trump's path to the White House in 2016 - AFP

Donald Trump is set to have his Facebook and Instagram accounts reinstated but Meta will put up “guardrails” to “deter” any offensive behaviour, Nick Clegg, the company’s head of policy, announced on Wednesday.

The former US president will be allowed back on the site in the coming weeks, following a two-year suspension after the deadly January 6 Capitol Hill insurrection led by his supporters.

Mr Trump, writing on his own social media site Truth Social, responded by saying such a ban should “never again happen to a sitting president”, while claiming Meta lost “billions of dollars” replatforming him.

The 76-year-old has said he will make another run for the White House in 2024, and Facebook and Instagram are key vehicles for political outreach and fundraising.

Facebook advertising played a big part in his path to the White House in 2016, with the site the main vehicle for him to raise vast amounts of political capital.

In November he regained access to Twitter, his once-favoured online megaphone, and a few weeks after he said he was in talks with Meta about returning.

“The public should be able to hear what their politicians are saying — the good, the bad and the ugly — so that they can make informed choices at the ballot box,” wrote Mr Clegg, Meta's president of global affairs, in the blog post.

“But that does not mean there are no limits to what people can say on our platform. When there is a clear risk of real world harm — a deliberately high bar for Meta to intervene in public discourse — we act.”

He went on to write that “in the event that Mr Trump posts further violating content, the content will be removed and he will be suspended for between one month and two years, depending on the severity of the violation".

Mr Trump’s campaign team had petitioned the company to reinstate his account in mid-January, saying that a continued ban would amount to Meta silencing “Mr. Trump’s political voice”.

The decision to ban Mr Trump was a polarising one for Meta, the world's biggest social media company, which prior to the Trump suspension had never blocked the account of a sitting head of state for violating its content rules.

The company indefinitely revoked Mr Trump's access to his Facebook and Instagram accounts after removing two of his posts during the riot in January 2021, including a video in which he reiterated his false claim of widespread voter fraud during the 2020 presidential election.

Democrats fear his return would see greater election misinformation on the platform, since Facebook has a policy of not fact-checking political candidates.

Mr Trump has continued to push the false narrative that he was the true winner of the 2020 election.