Former President Donald Trump is coming back to Facebook and Instagram.
According to president of global affairs at META, the company that owns Facebook and Instagram, Trump’s accounts will be reinstated “in the coming weeks” and will have “new guardrails in place to deter repeat offenses.”
NBC News reports:
Those guardrails will include “heightened penalties for repeat offenses — penalties which will apply to other public figures whose accounts are reinstated from suspensions related to civil unrest under our updated protocol. 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,” Clegg said on the company’s website.
A spokesperson for Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The move comes weeks after the timeframe Facebook gave itself to re-evaluate the 2021 decision, and weeks after Republicans — many of whom have been critical of Facebook’s decision — regained control of the House of Representatives.
Then-House Minority Leader — and now House Speaker — Kevin McCarthy vowed to “rein in big tech power over our speech” after Facebook announced the duration of Trump’s suspension in 2021.
The news comes just a week after a different report claimed Trump was getting ready to come back to Twitter.
Difficulties could arise that make it now work out but now, according to a new report in NBC News, it looks like Trump could finally be coming back to Twitter and Facebook.
As that report put it:
Mounting a comeback for the White House, Donald Trump is looking to regain control over his powerful social media accounts.
With access to his Twitter account back, Trump’s campaign is formally petitioning Facebook’s parent company to unblock his account there after it was locked in response to the U.S. Capitol riot two years ago.
“We believe that the ban on President Trump’s account on Facebook has dramatically distorted and inhibited the public discourse,” Trump’s campaign wrote in its letter to Meta on Tuesday, according to a copy reviewed by NBC News.
A Republican, speaking to NBC on the matter, said “Trump is probably coming back to Twitter. It’s just a question of how and when. He’s been talking about it for weeks, but Trump speaks for Trump, so it’s anyone’s guess what he’ll do or say or when.”
Further, according to NBC, he’s already having his first tweet crafted. “Another Trump confidant who also didn’t want to be identified speaking about conversations with him said that Trump has sought input for weeks about hopping back on Twitter and that his campaign advisers have also workshopped ideas for his first tweet,” NBC reports.
One of the main holdups with Trump’s return to the platform is likely his contract with Truth Social, which requires that he post anything he’s going to post on Twitter or Facebook on Truth Social first, 6 hours in advance.
That contractural obligation keeps Truth Social alive, as it’s the first place for people to turn if they want to see what Trump is thinking and saying.
