- NME
VIVA – Donald Trump has officially asked to be able back on Facebook, his campaign team said on Wednesday, January 19, 2023, calling not to “reduce a presidential candidate to silence”.
The former President of the United States (US) was banned from Facebook more than two years ago after his followers attacked the Capitol in a failed attempt to stop the certification of Joe Biden's victory in the 2020 presidential election.
In a letter to Meta, Trump's advisers argued that the ban "dramatically distorts and inhibits public discourse" and should be overturned. Meta said it would announce a decision in the coming weeks in line with the process we laid out.”
Their decision comes from the deadlines they set. While Trump's ban was initially indefinite, Meta's company later promised to revisit its account in January 2023, two years after the suspension began.
Meta (Facebook).
- The Guardian
The company has reportedly formed an internal working group, gathering senior figures across the organization, to debate the final decision.
Facebook and Twitter banned Trump the day after the January 6 attack that was linked to nine deaths including suicides among law enforcement. Trump used his Twitter account to encourage his supporters to gather near the Capitol.
In a speech before the attack, he urged his supporters to "fight like hell". He later used Twitter to criticize his vice president, Mike Pence, for not stopping the certification while the attack was underway.
A congressional committee recommended that Trump be criminally charged in connection with the attack, taking responsibility for the fate of hundreds of his supporters. Twitter lifted its ban on Trump after Elon Musk bought the platform last year. But Trump has not tweeted since then, choosing to stick with his own rival social media service, Truth Social.
Trump's accounts on Facebook and Twitter have 34 million and nearly 88 million followers respectively. On Truth Social, he has less than 5 million followers. Trump used Twitter and Facebook extensively while running for president in 2016 and throughout his term.
Charged with the Capitol attack but acquitted, Trump announced his reelection as a candidate for US president in 2024 in mid-November. In doing so, he sought to reward Republicans for winning back the US House of Representatives in the midterm elections, even though their majority was much narrower than expected and many Trump-backed candidates suffered defeats.
Trump's ban on social media sparked heated debate, with Republicans deriding the move as massive technological censorship, while others said it was too little too late.
Experts say that the stakes for Trump's return to Facebook are high, given his extremist rhetoric and propensity to spread misinformation have only increased since he left office as US President.
