USA: After more than two years of being banned from the social media platforms in the wake of the riot at the US Capitol, Donald Trump's time in social media prison appears to be coming to an end. The former president has reportedly been given back control of his Facebook and Instagram accounts.
On Thursday, a number of media outlets reported that Trump had reclaimed control over his accounts this week. Given that Trump had announced his candidature for president in 2024, Meta Platforms Inc., the company that owns Facebook and Instagram, declared last month that the ban would be lifted.
In order for the public to make educated voting decisions, Meta said in a statement that they should be able to hear what their politicians are saying, good, bad, and ugly.
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The business added that "new guardrails" had been put in place to discourage reoccurring policy violations, including harsher sanctions in the event that Trump transgresses them.Since Twitter had previously allowed Trump to post again, he is now essentially free to do so on all of the major social media networks.
Elon Musk, a multibillionaire who paid $44 billion for Twitter last October, invited Donald Trump back to the site in November. Despite the success of his own platform, Truth Social, the former president hasn't started tweeting again and has stated that he doesn't see any reason to do so.
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As of Thursday afternoon, there was no new content on Trump's Facebook or Instagram accounts. His final post on Facebook, where he has 34 million fans, was a request for "everyone at the US Capitol to remain peaceful" on January 6, 2021. His Twitter account, which is still inactive, has 87.6 million followers, whereas his Instagram account has 23.4 million. On Truth Social, he has fewer than five million followers as a comparison.
As the race for the Republican Party's presidential nomination in 2024 intensifies, Trump may be tempted to resume using legacy social media platforms given their wide reach. But because he only appears on Truth Social, his platform becomes more valuable and his ownership stake in the company could be worth billions of dollars.
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In fact, he has a contractual requirement that he wait at least six hours after posting on Truth Social before sending the same content to other platforms until June. Political messaging is exempt from that restriction, and when the exclusivity agreement expires in June, he may decide not to renew it.