social networking giant Meta has restored former US President Donald Trump’s access to Facebook and Instagram after a ban of two years, spokesperson Andy Stone confirmed on Thursday.The company had announced last month it would reinstate Trump’s accounts on Facebook and Instagram soon with “new guardrails”.
Trump was banned from social media platforms over the 2021 US Capitol insurrection. Facebook banned Trump a day after the January 6, 2021 uprising, when a mob of his supporters seeking to halt the certification of his election defeat to Joe Biden stormed the US Capitol in Washington.
“We will be reinstating Mr. Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts in the coming weeks,” Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs, said in a statement in January adding that the move would come with “new guardrails in place to deter repeat offenses.”
The former reality TV star had spent weeks falsely claiming that the presidential election was stolen from him and he was subsequently impeached for inciting the riot.
He had 23 million followers on Instagram and 34 million on Facebook as of January.His Twitter account, which has 88 million followers, was also blocked after the riot, leaving him to communicate through Truth Social, where he has fewer than five million followers.
New Twitter owner Elon Musk reinstated Trump’s account last November, days after Trump announced a fresh White House run. He has yet to post.Trump’s shock victory in 2016 was credited in part to his leverage of social media and his enormous digital reach.