Saturday marks exactly two years since Donald Trump was banned from Facebook. Parent company Meta will decide this month whether the former US president can return. How was it exactly?
Trump was banned from the platform indefinitely on January 7, 2021. Facebook made this decision after a large group of supporters of the former president stormed the Capitol, the US parliament building. They did it after Trump lost the presidential election.
During the unrest, the former president posted two messages on Facebook in which the company said it was calling for “a violent uprising against a democratically elected government”. Five people were killed in the storm.
After Facebook banned Trump, the platform has received a lot of criticism from users. Facebook’s independent oversight board, the Oversight Board, has also questioned the ex-president’s banishment.
Trump was banned for two years
The board eventually ruled that Facebook had the right to block Trump in this situation, because he had “grossly violated” the rules. But according to the Supervisory Body, imposing an indefinite sentence was too arbitrary. That’s why Meta has decided to give it a duration of two years.
This deadline expires on January 7, 2023. Facebook was originally expected to evaluate before then whether Trump would be welcome back on the platform. But according to the British newspaper Financial Times the decision was postponed to the end of the month.
According to various sources, Meta set up a working group to look into the matter. The group is made up of members of the policy and communication teams. Meta wants to investigate whether “the risk to public safety” has been reduced. If not, the company can extend the ban.
The former president does not want to return to Twitter
Whether Trump wants to return to Facebook remains to be seen. Recently, Twitter owner Elon Musk decided to lift Trump’s ban from Twitter, but the former president hasn’t shown up there since. For now, he’s sticking to his Truth Social platform. “Twitter has a lot of problems,” Trump said earlier this month.
But the problem is more likely simply to do with money. Truth Social has long been struggling with financial problems. According to The Washington Post Trump said he is currently single-handedly championing the platform. He doesn’t want the platform he’s so closely connected with to fail.
Trump wants to make Truth Social public. To keep the value of the company high, it is important that the former president remains exclusively on Truth Social.
