Meta lays out special rules that will apply to Donald Trump when he returns to Facebook and Instagram
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Your support makes all the difference.Donald Trump will be allowed back on Facebook and Instagram – but will be subject to special new rules when he does so.
Parent company Meta announced that it would be lifting a ban on the former president that went into effect almost exactly two years ago, in the wake of the attacks on the Capitol. It had banned him amid suggestions he had used social media to encourage that unrest – and fears that he could continue to do the same.
Now, Meta says that those security concerns no longer remain and the risk has reduced. As such, it will allow Mr Trump back onto both Facebook and Instagram.
But when he does so, he will be held in by new “guardrails” that are intended to stop him acting the same way in the future. What’s more, those rules will also be applied to other public figures.
They were announced in a blog post by Meta’s president of global affairs, Nick Clegg, who suggested that the return of Mr Trump had been a free speech issue as well as indicating that the reasons behind the ban were now less applicable.
Mr Clegg said that Mr Trump would be subject to Facebook and Instagram’s Community Standards in the same way that any other user of the site would be. In the past, Meta and other social media platforms have been accused of treating public figures and lucrative users of the site differently from normal users.
Because he has broken the site’s rules before, Mr Trump will face “heightened penalties” for any further offences, Mr Clegg said. If he posted “further violating content”, it will be removed and “he will be suspended for between one month and two years, depending on the severity of the violation”.
That is part of a new protocol aimed at limiting the danger of accounts during times of civil unrest, Mr Clegg said.
That new protocol also looks at content that does not violate the normal rules but “contributes to the sort of risk that materialized on January 6, such as content that delegitimizes an upcoming election or is related to QAnon”. Such posts may be limited in their reach, he said, and if people repeatedly post it then they may not be able to advertise on the platform.
That would mean, for instance, that Mr Trump’s page would still host such content but that it would not appear in users’ feeds – even if they follow his account. Meta might also choose to stop people resharing those posts, and stop them being recommended or promoted as ads.
Mr Clegg said that Meta had been emphasising those new “guardrails” in an attempt to head of criticism and calls for Mr Trump’s posts to be acted on.
“We are highlighting these rules today because we anticipate that should Mr. Trump choose to resume activity on our platforms, many people will call for us to take action against his account and the content he posts, while many others will be upset if he is suspended again, or if some of his content is not distributed on our platforms,” he wrote. “We want to be as clear as possible now about our policies, so that even in those instances where people will disagree with us, they still understand the rationale for our responses.”
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