Meta to Reinstate Donald Trump's Facebook, Instagram Accounts
Category: News & Politics
Via: vic-eldred • last year • 23 commentsBy: Meghan Bobrowsky and Jeff Horwitz (WSJ)
Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc. said it would reinstate former President Donald Trump's Facebook and Instagram accounts, more than two years after they were suspended in the wake of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
Meta said Wednesday that the accounts would be reinstated "in the coming weeks." It added, "The public should be able to hear what politicians are saying so they can make informed choices."
Meta’s head of global affairs, Nick Clegg, said that the company had concluded the risk to public safety that warranted Mr. Trump’s original suspension from the platforms had receded adequately, so a continued ban on his accounts wasn’t justifiable. But, he said, Meta would closely watch the former president’s accounts.
Mr. Trump, on his social-media platform Truth Social, said, “Such a thing should never again happen to a sitting President, or anybody else who is not deserving of retribution!”
Meta suspended Mr. Trump’s Facebook account indefinitely in January 2021 after determining that he had praised violence committed by his supporters at the U.S. Capitol in response to false claims of a stolen election. His Instagram account was also suspended.
“His decision to use his platform to condone rather than condemn the actions of his supporters at the Capitol building has rightly disturbed people in the U.S. and around the world,” Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said at the time.
Meta had indicated it would eventually restore Mr. Trump’s access, writing months after it took the action in January that it would punish his account for additional violations of its rules “when the suspension is eventually lifted.”
It reinforced that view Wednesday. “In light of his violations, he now also faces heightened penalties for repeat offenses,” Mr. Clegg said, adding that such heightened enforcement would occur in future instances when public figures suspended for encouraging potential civil unrest are reinstated to the platforms.
Twitter Inc. also suspended Mr. Trump’s personal account around the same time. Elon Musk last year reinstated Mr. Trump’s account; Mr. Musk had said in May that he planned to do so once he took over the platform. Mr. Musk closed the $44 billion deal in October and lifted the suspension in November, days after Mr. Trump said he would make another run for the White House.
Mr. Trump hasn’t resumed posting on Twitter since the account restoration on that platform.
Mr. Trump was a regular user of social-media platforms before running for office and while in the White House, though Twitter, where he had 87 million followers, was his preferred platform. His posts to Facebook, where he had 34 million followers, consisted largely of material cross-posted from Twitter.
Facebook was historically more important to Mr. Trump as a fundraising vehicle. During Mr. Trump’s suspension from the platform, his campaign continued to run Facebook ads.
After Facebook suspended Mr. Trump, the platform’s outside Oversight Board reviewed the suspension. While the group broadly agreed with the action, it objected to it lasting for an indeterminate amount of time. Facebook in June 2021 said that the suspension would last at least two years and that it would revisit the decision in January 2023, two years after the original suspension.
Mr. Trump, at the time, objected to the suspension.
After being effectively kicked off mainstream social-media platforms, Mr. Trump launched Truth Social , where he has nearly five million followers. Mr. Trump is obligated for some time to make any social-media posts first on Truth Social, though there are exceptions, including posts from a personal account for certain political activities, according to a regulatory filing.
"Meta said Wednesday that the accounts would be reinstated "in the coming weeks." It added, "The public should be able to hear what politicians are saying so they can make informed choices."
After interfering in the 2020 election and censoring a sitting President, we now have a change of heart?
Even if the former President chooses to return, he has been seriously wounded politically.
During his time on Twitter Trump attacked or disparaged over 600 people, by name. Not to mention his countless lies and hallucinations and the conspiracy theories he constantly promoted.
As much as anything else his social media output proved how absolutely unfit for public office he is.
The danger here is that there are still millions of deluded souls out there who will look at Trumps verbal diarrhea on social media and conclude there is something of value there.
The US Constitution protects ALL speech.
Amen.
The US Constitution does not guarantee any venue for that speech.
Once the FBI got involved it made that argument mute.
What's the FBI got to do with it? Facebook can't censor a sitting President. He has the bully pulpit. All he has to do is call a press conference and anything he has to say will be broadcast over all kinds of media including Facebook. Quit pretending that he's a poor little innocent victim here.
Go to a movie theater and yell fire.
Go to an elementary school and yell that you have a gun.
Go onto Facebook or Twitter and state that you want to kill POTUS.
ALL speech is NOT protected.
Yes, all speech is protected from being blocked by the federal government from your utterance. You can go into a movie theater and yell fire. If there is not a fire you will face consequences, if there is a fire you will be hailed as a hero. All the others, the federal government cannot stop you from speaking those things so therefor yes, the speech is protected. Free speech does not and was never designed to protect you from the consequences of your actions.
The consequence of his actions is that he was barred from posting by private companies. I assume you are happy that happened.
I wanted someone to take away his phone while he was still in office, that's how sick I was of his twitter shit. The fact that he was barred by social media didn't impact me all that much as I don't follow him. All my knowledge of what he tweeted, etc was what was reported by the news. That didn't stop me from realizing that there was a lot of hypocrisy around his being banned when there were plenty of others who were just as bad or worse who were not banned. I mean, come on. The President of the USA is banned but the President of Iran who called for the destruction of Israel and the death of all Jews was not?
Partisan politics played too large a role in this.
But yes, his right to free speech was still upheld as the government did not prevent him from speaking. Of course we're still quite a ways from the ending of investigations into what part the FBI may have played in all of this so there could still be First Amendment issues to be resolved.
As Elon Musk demonstrated: quite a bit!
"The First Amendment protects offensive speech, Justice Samuel Alito wrote in this unanimous decision. “The proudest boast of our free speech jurisprudence is that we protect the freedom to express ‘the thought that we hate,’” he said, quoting the classic 1929 dissent from Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes.
(Trump-era snowflakes usually misapply Holmes’ famous line — not shouting fire in a crowded theatre — to justify banning offensive speech by claiming it incites violence. They’re wrong; it doesn’t work that way at all. The whole thing is laid out here .)"
That's become the arena of the day.
Even the ACLU is for this reinstatement of Trump and the Democrats are going crazy.
The question I have is, is this more a defensive action by META considering the Republican led House with it's investigative arms already looking at social media and how it's operated the past several years?
That is a good question.
Why now?
Donald back on mendacious mumbling? Meh, that should offer up some competition around these parts.
The more we hear from this imbecile, the more we realize our collective mistake in giving him a position of power.
So let him speak, and let his words convince us just how delusional he is and those who bought in to the venality were.
A cautionary tale.
A rather funny read on how MSNBC covered this issue. Their hair-on-fire and danger-to-democracy is actually funny to watch and read. I sometimes wonder how large the que cards are that are besides the cameras to help the panelists out. Yes, it's a Fox article on Morning Joe.
There is a new (like the turds returning to Capistrano) attempt to rehabilitate Trump. These attempts pop up like weeds in a rose garden.
As long as people want to normalize Trump, by such as cheering his return to social media, there is a threat to democracy. He tried to steal the 2020 election and is running again.
For all the people who want to normalize Trump, there will also be people who will scream, cry, pull their hair and shout about the danger to democracy. So I would say that's a wash..