According to an updated blog post on Friday, Meta announced that former President Donald Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts will no longer be subject to the high suspension penalty. The company said the decision was made to ensure that all presidential candidates have equal representation on its platform ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
When Meta restored Trump’s social media profiles in January 2023, the company gave him a harsher penalty than other users. Under the enhanced penalty, the former president could have been banned for up to two years for violating Meta’s community standards. Now, the company says Trump will face the same penalty as any other Facebook or Instagram user.
According to the rules for general users, if you violate Facebook's Community Standards, you will receive a warning. After two violations, a user may be banned from certain posting features for a limited time. After seven violations, a user will be banned from posting for a full day, and after ten violations, a user will be banned for a month.
“As we weigh our responsibilities to allow political expression, we believe the American people should be able to hear presidential candidates’ opinions to the same standard,” Mehta said in a blog post.
Meta originally banned Trump after the January 6, 2021 riots, when he used Facebook as his favorite way to connect with his supporters online. Then-CEO Mark Zuckerberg said, “The risks of allowing the president to continue to use our service during this time are too great,” before banning Trump indefinitely. These days, Trump posts regularly on Facebook for his 34 million followers, but he’s more active on his own social media platform, Truth Social.
The company is backing off its harsher penalties for the former president just before the 2024 Republican National Convention. But Mehta says the enhanced suspensions are a response to extreme circumstances and were never applied to Trump.
Earlier this week, Donald Trump posted a threatening statement on TruthSocial about Mark Zuckerberg. The former president said he would put “election fraudsters” in jail and called the Meta CEO by his latest nickname, “Zuckerbucks.” Trump warned Zuckerberg to “be careful.”
