US election campaign: Meta lifts remaining restrictions on Trump

The Facebook group Meta is lifting the remaining restrictions on former President Donald Trump before the hot phase of the election campaign for the White House. This means that he will no longer face harsher penalties for violating the rules.

Trump had already gotten his Facebook and Instagram accounts back in early 2023. However, as a repeat offender, he could have been banned again for even minor violations of the platforms’ rules.

In an update to the blog post at the time, Meta pointed out that Trump would soon be officially nominated as the Republican Party’s presidential candidate. And the public has the right to hear from candidates from both parties on the same basis. At the same time, the company emphasized that all rules designed to keep hate speech or insults off the platform continue to apply to all candidates.

Exile after storming the Capitol

Trump was banned from major online platforms towards the end of his term after his supporters stormed the US Capitol in Washington on January 6, 2021. Before the unprecedented events, he had incited his supporters with the baseless claim that he had been deprived of victory in the 2020 presidential election through fraud.

In his online messages before and after the Capitol attack, he openly expressed sympathy for the rioters. The platform operators feared that there could be new violence if Trump was not banned.

The Facebook group initially banned Trump until further notice. But Meta’s independent supervisory board, which can review decisions on content and accounts, ultimately came to the conclusion that an indefinite ban was not covered by the platform’s rules. It decided that Trump’s accounts on Facebook and Instagram could initially only be blocked for two years – and that the decision would have to be reassessed after that.

Blog entry by Meta