Andre M. Chang/ZUMA
Over the years, Donald Trump has hardly been a responsible social media user: He’s railed against the “fake news media” while disseminating actual fake news, referred to his impeachments as a “scam” and a “hoax,” repeatedly undermined the integrity of the 2020 election, fueled an attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, and spewed so much Covid misinformation that we built a timeline of it. He has used his social media accounts to impugn powerful women, and to viciously attack officials he dislikes, often resulting in threats of violence against them. In March, he shared a video on Truth Social depicting Joe Biden tied up in the back of a pickup truck, employing a messaging tactic experts refer to as “stochastic terrorism.”
Despite these transgressions and more, Meta announced Friday that it would remove restrictions on Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts to “ensure people can hear from political candidates” in the lead-up to the 2024 election.
The decision comes just over three years since Meta and Twitter suspended Trump’s accounts in response to the Jan. 6 mob attack on the US Capitol. Twitter reinstated Trump’s account in 2022, shortly after Elon Musk purchased the company. Meta lifted its suspension on Trump’s accounts in January 2023, but placed several “guardrails” on the former president, including advertising penalties for breaking its guidelines. According to Axios, which first reported Meta’s announcement, no other public figure had been subject to such restrictions.
Now, those guardrails are gone. With the Republican convention coming up, Meta’s president of global affairs Nick Clegg noted in a statement, nominees for president will soon be solidified. “In assessing our responsibility to allow political expression, we believe that the American people should be able to hear from the nominees for President on the same basis,” the statement read.
The Biden campaign doesn’t see it that way. As a spokesman told the New York Times, the decision “will allow Trump and his MAGA allies to reach more Americans with their fundamentally undemocratic, un-American misinformation,” calling it “a direct attack on our safety and our democracy.”
