Former President Donald Trump stunned the social media world on Friday with his first Facebook post since the Big Tech platform banned him after Jan. 6, 2021.
The former president had a little fun with his big return, which will undoubtedly make waves as he pulls out all the stops on his quest to once again win the Republican Party nomination to make a third run for the White House.
“I’M BACK,” Trump wrote. He attached a video clip that added some humor to his announcement. The clip was from when he was elected president in 2016, flanked by former Vice President Mike Pence and his son, Barron Trump.
“Sorry to keep you waiting, complicated business, complicated,” the former president said in the video to a round of applause from those in attendance at his acceptance speech.
As reported at the time, Facebook (now Meta) CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the decision to temporarily ban the president, citing the need to help facilitate a “peaceful transition of power.”
“The shocking events of the last 24 hours clearly demonstrate that President Donald Trump intends to use his remaining time in office to undermine the peaceful and lawful transition of power to his elected successor, Joe Biden,” Zuckerberg wrote, according to Reuters. “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. We removed these statements yesterday because we judged that their effect — and likely their intent — would be to provoke further violence.”
Earlier this year, Facebook announced that the two-year ban on the former president’s account would be lifted, adding that after review, he no longer posed a “serious risk to public safety.” However, Facebook stated that “guardrails” would be in place on his Facebook account to prevent what they perceive to be any future “risk.”
“Our determination is that the risk has sufficiently receded, and that we should therefore adhere to the two-year timeline we set out. As such, we will be reinstating Mr. Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts in the coming weeks. However, we are doing so with new guardrails in place to deter repeat offenses,” said Nick Clegg, president of global affairs at Meta, according to Fox News.
Clegg added that the 45th president’s reinstatement condition will “include a heightened penalty for a repeat offense, should Trump violate the platforms’ terms of service.”
How the Facebook censorship overlords treat his account as the 2024 election inches closer will be interesting to watch, to say the least.
As PJ Media’s Catherine Salgado wrote in January:
Meta has decided to allow President Donald Trump back on Facebook and Instagram after an “unprecedented” two-year suspension, but don’t get too excited about a victory for free speech. There are already all kinds of provisos for how Facebook can censor Trump as soon as he posts something the platform moderators dislike, and Facebook is rolling out “updated protocol” or increased censorship measures for content that violates platform rules or simply “contributes” to “risk.” Because Facebook is never biased when it comes to assessing “risk.”
Though Trump relies heavily on the success of his Truth Social platform, his reach on Facebook — at some 34 million followers as of this writing — will undoubtedly bolster his fundraising efforts.
According to Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung, Trump’s campaign dropped a staggering $44 million in ads on Facebook between June and November 2016, running some 6 million variations of campaign ads.
Related: Turns Out Trump’s Truth Social Is Not Very Social
With the current state of Zuckerberg’s cost-cutting efforts at Meta, for a platform that is nowhere near as popular and profitable as it once was, a fresh round of political ad revenue from a political giant could come in handy and will probably affect just how aggressively the platform monitors him.
Will Trump make his return to Twitter as well? Only time will tell.
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