Tech giant Meta said Friday it was lifting former President Donald Trump's “strict account suspension” from Facebook and Instagram as the 2024 election approaches.
Nick Clegg, President, Global Affairs; release The company updated its statement on its website, saying it would be changing its protocols, specifically regarding restrictions on President Trump, to allow users to “listen to political candidates” starting in January 2023. The company said previous restrictions on Trump were imposed “in response to extreme and extraordinary circumstances” following the January 6 attack on the Capitol. (RELATED: Exclusive: Republican lawmakers investigate Zuckerberg and Meta for hiding “political and social” content from users' feeds)
“In assessing the responsibility for permitting political expression, we believe the American people should be able to hear from presidential candidates with the same standards. As a result, as the Republican nominee, former President Trump will not be subject to the enhanced suspension,” Clegg wrote.
In 2021, Facebook faced strong backlash from President Joe Biden's White House over the company's stance on coronavirus posts, with the president accusing the company of “killing people” by failing to censor so-called coronavirus-related misinformation.
Documents released by then-Louisiana Republican Attorney General Jeff Landry later revealed that the White House in 2021 pressured Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to censor comments by former Fox News host and Daily Caller co-founder Tucker Carlson for saying COVID-19 vaccines “don't work.” A House Judiciary Committee report released in May found that Facebook executives described tensions with White House officials over the issue as a “knife fight.”
“In reaching this conclusion, we also believed that these penalties were a response to extreme and unusual circumstances and were not necessary. All candidates for United States presidency are required to follow the same Community Standards as all Facebook and Instagram users, including policies to prevent hate speech and incitement to violence,” Clegg continued.
In this photo illustration, the logos of social media platforms are displayed on a smartphone screen. (Photo by Anna Barclay/Getty Images)
Following the January 2021 attack on the Capitol, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced an indefinite ban of President Trump from both Facebook and Instagram, saying that he had “clearly demonstrated his intention to use his remaining time in office to disrupt the peaceful and lawful transition of power to his elected successor, Joe Biden.”
But nearly two years later, the social media platform reinstated Trump's account, allowing the former president to return to the site in January 2023 and launch a new “Crisis Policy Protocol To guide “assessment of the risk of imminent harm on and off the platform.”
During Trump's time off the Meta platform, he turned to his own social media site, Truth Social, owned by Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG). It's unclear if he'll use the platform for his 2024 campaign, but TMTG's contract with Trump starting in 2023 states that the president “will generally be required to post any social media post on Truth Social first before posting on any other social platform for a period of six hours.”
The tech company's announcement comes just days before the Republican National Convention (RNC), which is scheduled to begin on July 15 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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