Meta has announced that former U.S. President Donald Trump's suspension from Facebook and Instagram will end "in the coming weeks," according to a Meta Newsroom article penned by Nick Clegg, the company's president of global affairs.
Trump was originally suspended on Jan. 7, 2021, just one day following the deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol.
The Associated Press called the riot "haunting," describing it as a day when "a mob of Trump supporters used flagpoles as weapons and brutally beat police officers."
According to the U.S. Capitol Police and the Metropolitan Police Department, 140 law enforcement officers were injured on Jan. 6. One officer died the next day and others have since taken their own lives. Some of the protesters who entered the Capitol carried "Blue Lives Matter" and "Thin Blue Line" flags. Such flags are supposed to represent support of police officers.
In previous reporting, we documented in detail how specific Facebook employees had failed to respond to our repeated emails sent ahead of the Capitol riot, in which we pointed them to specific calls for violence that were posted in the weeks surrounding the 2020 U.S. presidential election. Some of those very same users later showed up at the Capitol on Jan. 6 and posted pictures of themselves on Facebook and Instagram that showed them attending the violent incident. These seemingly striking developments never received wider reporting from other news organizations, despite our repeatedefforts to raise public awareness.
On the day after the riot, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg initially announced Trump's suspension, saying that the former president intended "to use his remaining time in office to undermine the peaceful and lawful transition of power to his elected successor, Joe Biden." Fast-forward to Jan. 25, 2023, and Meta has announced that Trump would be let back onto Facebook and Instagram.
"Two years ago, we took action in what were extreme and highly unusual circumstances," Meta's announcement from Clegg read. "We indefinitely suspended then-U.S. President Donald Trump's Facebook and Instagram accounts following his praise for people engaged in violence at the Capitol on January 6, 2021."
After two years and much apparent discussion amongst the company's "oversight board," it was decided that it would soon be time to lift Trump's suspension.
Still, Meta said that there were "new guardrails in place to deter repeat offenses," adding that Trump "now also faces heightened penalties for repeat offenses."
The rest of the piece appeared to be an effort by Meta to try to get across the message that it wouldn't be able to please everyone with its enforcement decisions:
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