Donald Trump is back on Facebook.
At least, he has turned his page, because the former president of the United States has not yet used it again.
Meta Platforms, owner of Facebook and Instagram, has reactivated Trump's accounts on both social networks this Thursday after a two-year suspension due to his messages of support for those who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Meta has already announced last month that would reactivate the profiles of the former president.
The big question now is whether Trump will use them again.
Trump's profiles on both networks have returned with all his active followers.
He has 34 million on Facebook and 24.3 million on Instagram, in both cases below the 87.6 million he accumulates on Twitter.
The short message network rehabilitated its account after a vote launched by its owner, Elon Musk, in mid-November.
Since then, however, Trump has remained silent on said network.
The last message from him is still one from January 8, 2021, prior to his suspension.
After his exclusion from Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, Trump took refuge in his own social network, Truth, of which he is the main shareholder.
Truth Social belongs to Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), of which Trump is president and founder.
According to a brochure registered with the supervisor, the former president has agreed by contract to use that social network for all of his messages and can only repeat them in others after six hours.
Trump's company would lose all its value without him as a protagonist and agitator.
In Truth, despite being the most popular user, he has less than five million followers, so the temptation to go to those other social platforms with greater reach is evident.
More, taking into account that Trump has launched his candidacy for the 2024 presidential elections and the networks can serve him to spread his messages and raise funds.
For now, the former president has reaffirmed his commitment to Truth and has hinted that he will not return to Twitter, Facebook or Instagram.
Meta's lifting of the suspension comes at a time when Republicans are investigating in the House of Representatives whether Twitter improperly silenced news about Hunter Biden, son of current President Joe Biden, in the 2020 election campaign. This episode, in which company executives limited some messages and silenced the echo of others, considering them inappropriate or that they could be the result of foreign interference in the elections, has served Trump to insist on his false refrain that the elections of 2020 were rigged.
Meta suspended the then-president's Facebook and Instagram accounts indefinitely after he praised the violent on Capitol Hill on January 6, 2021.
The Supervisory Board, a body of independent experts, upheld the decision, but criticized its indefinite nature and the lack of clear criteria for when suspended accounts would be reinstated.
As a result, Meta imposed a temporary suspension of two years from the date of the original decision, on January 7, 2021, and said that before making any decision on whether or not to lift it, it would assess whether the risk to the public safety had diminished.
“The suspension was an extraordinary decision taken in extraordinary circumstances,” Nick Clegg, head of Global Affairs at Meta and former UK deputy prime minister with David Cameron, said in a statement last month.
“The normal thing is that the public can once again listen on our platforms to a former president of the United States and a declared candidate for that position.
Now that the suspension period has expired, the question is not whether we decide to reinstate Mr. Trump's accounts, but rather whether circumstances continue to exist so extraordinary that extending the suspension beyond the original two-year period is warranted."
Under surveillance
After doing that analysis, Meta concluded that the risk has decreased sufficiently and that, therefore, it should stick to the two-year time frame.
Still, Meta is keeping Trump under surveillance and has imposed new limits on him to deter him from reoffending.
“Should Mr. Trump repost infringing content, it will be removed and he will be suspended for anywhere from one month to two years, depending on the severity of the infringement,” Clegg warned.
Meta's protocol addresses content that does not violate its rules, but contributes to the type of risk that materialized on January 6, such as content that delegitimizes an upcoming election or is related to the QAnon conspiracy group.
“We may limit the distribution of such postings and, in repeated cases, temporarily restrict access to our advertising tools.
This move would mean that the content would still be visible on Mr. Trump's account, but would not be distributed in people's threads, even if they follow Mr. Trump," Clegg explained, among other things.
“By default, we let people talk, even when what they have to say is unpleasant or incorrect.
Democracy is complicated and people need to be able to make their voices heard.
We believe that it is necessary and possible to draw a dividing line between content that is harmful and should be removed, and content that, however unpleasant or inaccurate, is part of the hectic life of a free society,” he added.
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