3 Years and 6 Months After Capitol Riot
Trump Uses Only 'Truth Social' After Suspension
Meta Platforms (Meta) announced that it will lift restrictions on former President Donald Trump's Facebook and Instagram accounts.
On the 12th (local time), Meta stated, "We will soon revoke the restrictions imposed on former President Trump's Instagram and Facebook accounts," adding, "This measure is being implemented to ensure equality among presidential candidates ahead of the U.S. presidential election in November."
Previously, in January 2021, Meta blocked Trump's account due to concerns that his repeated false claims on Facebook about the election being rigged could incite violence during the Capitol riot by his supporters.
In March of last year, Meta restored Trump's account but imposed stricter restrictions compared to other users, such as suspending the account or limiting promotional posts in case of policy violations.
Accordingly, the full restoration of former President Trump's social media (SNS) accounts comes after three and a half years since January 2021.
Some analysts interpret Meta's move as a de facto surrender, as Trump's chances of winning the Republican presidential nomination have increased.
Twitter (now X), which had permanently suspended Trump's account, lifted the suspension after CEO Elon Musk acquired the company.
Former President Trump can post on Facebook, Instagram, and X, but since February 2022, he has primarily used his own social media platform, Truth Social. He has posted on X only once.
Previously, Trump publicly criticized Meta over account suspensions and other issues.
In March, when the U.S. Congress was pushing a bill to ban the Chinese video platform TikTok, Trump said, "If TikTok is eliminated, Facebook and 'Eolgani Jeok'’s business will grow twice as much," criticizing, "I don't want Facebook, which cheated in the last election, to do better."
He also claimed, "They are true enemies of the people," and referred to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg by combining the first two syllables of his name, "Zucker," with the Yiddish word "schmuck," meaning fool or idiot, calling him "Zuckerschmuck."
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