Former president Donald Trump's Facebook and Instagram accounts will be reinstated, Meta announced Wednesday, more than two years after it suspended the accounts in the wake of the January 6 Capitol riot.
Nick Clegg, president of global affairs at Meta, said the accounts will be up and running "in the coming weeks."
The two platforms will implement "new guardrails" to "deter repeat offenses," Clegg said, including “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 in a statement.
The reinstatement comes after Trump's presidential campaign wrote a letter to Meta on January 17 asking the company to allow the former president to return to Facebook.
"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 a letter obtained by NBC News.
Meta suspended Trump’s accounts over posts he made during the Capitol riot.
"These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly unfairly treated for so long,” Trump posted at the time. “Go home with love in peace. Remember this day forever!"
Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg extended Trump’s initial 24-hour ban, saying the "risks of allowing the President to continue to use our service during this period are simply too great."
"Therefore, we are extending the block we have placed on his Facebook and Instagram accounts indefinitely and for at least the next two weeks until the peaceful transition of power is complete," Zuckerberg wrote at the time.
Then, Facebook later announced in June 2021 that it was banning the former president from both platforms until January 2023.
Trump’s posts during the Capitol riot also led Twitter to permanently ban him from the platform. However, Twitter’s new CEO, Elon Musk, reinstated Trump’s account on November 19. Trump has yet to make use of the account, instead preferring to stick to his own Truth Social platform.
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