Trump to be allowed back on Facebook and Instagram

SAN FRANCISCO: Social networking giant Meta announced it would soon reinstate former president Donald Trump’s accounts on Facebook and Instagram with “new guardrails,” two years ater he was banned over the 2021 US Capitol insurrection.

“We will be reinstating Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts in the coming weeks,” Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs, said in a statement, adding that the move would come with “new guardrails in place to deter repeat offenses.”

Going forward, the Republican leader — who has already declared himself a 2024 presidential candidate — could be suspended for up to two years for each violation of plaform policies, Clegg said.

It was not clear when or if Trump will return to the plaforms, and his representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

But the 76-year-old tycoon reacted in typically bullish fashion, crowing that Facebook had lost “billions of dollars in value” in his absence.

“Such a thing should never again happen to a siting president, or anybody else who is not deserving of retribution!” he said on his Truth Social plaform.

Facebook banned Trump a day ater the Jan.6, 2021 uprising, when a mob of his supporters seeking to halt the certification of his election defeat to Joe Biden stormed the US Capitol in Washington.

The former reality TV star had spent weeks falsely claiming that the presidential election was stolen from him and he was subsequently impeached for inciting the riot.

In a leter asking for the ban to be overturned, Trump’s lawyer Scot Gast said last week that Meta had “dramatically distorted and inhibited the public discourse.”

He asked for a meeting to discuss Trump’s “prompt reinstatement to the plaform” of Facebook, where he had 34 million followers, arguing that his status as the leading contender for the Republican nomination in 2024 justified ending the ban.