Former US president Donald Trump has written his first posts on his reinstated Facebook and YouTube accounts, more than two years after he was banned over the US Capitol insurrection.
“I’M BACK,” Trump wrote on Friday, alongside a second video clip that appeared to show him giving his victory speech after winning the 2016 election, as he exclaimed: “Sorry to keep you waiting — complicated business.”
Alphabet Inc-owned
YouTube said it lifted restrictions on Trump’s channel following a more than two-year
suspension after the deadly Capitol Hill riot on January 6, 2021.
Meta Platforms Inc had reinstated Trump’s Facebook
and Instagram accounts earlier this year, while his Twitter
account was restored in November by new owner Elon Musk.
“We carefully evaluated the continued risk of real-world
violence, while balancing the chance for voters to hear equally
from major national candidates in the run-up to an election,”
YouTube said in a tweet, referring to the move.
The video-streaming platform banned Trump in 2021 for
violating its policy of inciting violence after his supporters
stormed the US Capitol when Congress began to certify Joe
Biden’s victory in the presidential election.
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Mixed views
Social media has been a key vehicle for reaching voters and fundraising and could give a boost to Trump, who will make another run for the presidency in 2024.
Trump has more than 2.6 million subscribers on YouTube, and another 34 million followers on Facebook and 23 million on Instagram.
But the former president is yet to make a post on Twitter. Instead, he has stuck to his Truth Social platform, the social media platform he founded in late 2021, where he has nearly 5 million followers.
Opponents of Trump’s return point to the messages he has posted on Truth Social as evidence that he continues to pose the same risk that led various social media platforms to suspend him in the first place.
More than 350 of his Truth Social posts would have violated Facebook’s rules, including posts amplifying the conspiracy theory QAnon and pushing false claims of election fraud, liberal advocacy group Accountable Tech said in a December report.
In a blog post, Meta said it updated its protocols on moderating public figures during times of civil unrest.
Under the protocol, Meta said it may restrict the distribution of a Trump post that doesn’t violate its rules but “contributes to the sort of risk that materialised on January 6.”
A restriction would mean the posts would remain available on Trump’s profile, but would not be distributed in users’ feeds, even if they follow Trump, Meta said.
The company said it could also prevent the posts from being reshared or run as paid ads.
Ad buyers previously told the Reuters news agency that Trump’s reinstatement was unlikely to change how brands advertise on the platforms, but it reinforced long-standing concerns about how Meta prevents ads from appearing next to certain content.
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