Former US President Donald Trump’s two-year ban on Facebook and Instagram is being lifted, according to the social media behemoth Meta.
Trump would be permitted to return to Meta’s platforms “in the coming weeks,” the company said in a statement, calling the suspension “an extraordinary decision taken in extraordinary circumstances.”
The public “should be able to hear what their politicians are saying,” said Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of international relations, in a statement.
Following the Capitol riot in 2021, the then-US president’s access to Facebook and Instagram was temporarily blocked.
According to Mr Clegg, the company responded to Mr Trump’s “praise for people engaged in violence at the Capitol.”
According to an assessment, Mr Trump’s accounts no longer pose a severe risk to the public’s safety, he claimed.
However, as a result of Mr Trump’s prior “violations,” he would now be subject to harsher punishments for repeat offences.
Republicans have been pushing for Mr Trump to be permitted to return to Facebook as he gears up to run for president once more in 2019.
Trump continued to distribute false information about the election results in one of his final Facebook postings before being suspended, reiterating the claim that the vote had been tainted by corruption.
His vice president, Mike Pence, who was in responsible for supervising the vote verification, was also criticised by him on the plateform.
During that time, Trump wrote, “Mike Pence didn’t dare to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify.”
In reaction, Mr Trump wrote on his own social media platform, Truth Social, on Wednesday that Facebook had “lost Billions” because it had barred “your favourite President, me.”
“Such a thing should never again happen to a sitting President, or anybody else who is not deserving of retribution!” he added.
