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Meta announces plans to lift censorship of Donald Trump

Facebook blocked access to the former president after the assault on the Capitol. Two years later, a company spokesman announces that it may allow the tycoon to return.

Donald Trump

(Flickr)

Published by
Rosana Rábago Sainz

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, recently announced that it is considering pardoning Donald Trump. The news was given by Andy Stone, a spokesman for the company, who sent a brief statement to The Hill in which he assured that the Big Tech company "will announce a decision in the coming weeks in line with the process we laid out."

Donald Trump has already reacted to the news through his social network, Truth Social. There he published a post in which he assured that, since Facebook banned him from accessing his account, the social network's problems had only grown:

Sadly, Facebook has been doing very poorly since they took me off. It has lost $750 Billion in value, and has become very boring. Hopefully, Facebook will be able to turn it around. Maybe their first step should be to get away from the ridiculous change in name to Meta, and go back to “Facebook.” Whoever made that decision, and the decision to take me off, will go down in the Business Hall of Fame for two of the worst decisions in Business History!

Trump banned for two years on Facebook and Instagram

The former president lost access to his Facebook and Instagram profiles on Jan. 7, 2021, one day after the assault on the Capitol. At the time, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg claimed that the veto was due to Trump' s use of the social network:

Donald Trump intends to use his remaining time in office to undermine the peaceful and lawful transition of power to his elected successor, Joe Biden. His decision to use his platform to condone rather than condemn the actions of his supporters at the Capitol building has rightly disturbed people in the US and around the world.

Six months later, in June 2021, Facebook's vice president of global affairs, Nick Clegg, announced that Trump was banned from Facebook and Instagram for two years, counting from January 7, 2021. Moreover, he reported, there was no guarantee that once the deadline passed, Trump would be able to return to the platform:

At the end of this period, we will look to experts to assess whether the risk to public safety has receded. We will evaluate external factors, including instances of violence, restrictions on peaceful assembly and other markers of civil unrest. If we determine that there is still a serious risk to public safety, we will extend the restriction for a set period of time and continue to re-evaluate until that risk has receded.

Two years later, Trump could not only return to Twitter, which recently pardoned him, but also regain his access to Facebook and Instagram. It remains to be seen whether, in the event of a pardon, the former president will return to Facebook or whether he will decide to continue using only Truth Social, his alternative social network.

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