Donald Trump, the 45th President of the United States, was banned from using various social media platforms, and that happened while he was still the president.
His accounts were banned shortly after the Capitol Hill attack.
On Facebook, his last post was on January 6, 2021, where he said things about election lies and an attack on then-Vice President Mike Pence, before calling on rioters to be peaceful.
Two yeas later, in 2023, Trump's Facebook account is reinstated, and Trump made a post about it on his own Truth Social social media platform, saying that: "Such a thing should never again happen to a sitting President, or anybody else who is not deserving of retribution!"
A while later, when he felt ready, Trump made his first post on Facebook.
“I’M BACK!” Trump wrote in the post, which included a short video clip taken from CNN of him from the night he was elected president.
It all began earlier this 2023, in January, when Meta Platforms Inc said that it wants to reinstate former U.S. President Donald Trump's Facebook and Instagram accounts, following a two-year suspension after the deadly Capitol Hill riot on January 6, 2021.
The decision was made after Trump announced his intention to make another run for the White House in 2024.
With around 30 million followers on Facebook and 23 million followers on Instagram, Meta believes that both of its platforms can be his key vehicles for political outreach and fundraising.
After all, it's free speech, and its advocates say that it is appropriate for the public to have access to messaging from political candidates.
In a statement announcing the decision to reverse the ban, Meta’s President of Global Affairs, Nick Clegg, said that the company no longer believed the former president’s Facebook account to pose the same “serious risk to public safety,” as it did when the platform banned him.
But to anticipate history from repeating itself, Meta said in a blog post that it has "put new guardrails in place to deter repeat offenses."
"In the event that Mr. Trump posts further violating content, the content will be removed and he will be suspended for between one month and two years, depending on the severity of the violation," said Clegg.
As for YouTube, the media streaming platform suspended Trump’s account on the platform six days after the January 6th attack on the Capitol.
The video platform from Google said it was concerned that Trump’s lies about the 2020 election could lead to more real-world violence.
Google reversed that decision on March 17th, allowing Trump to once again upload videos to the popular site.
The move came soon after a similar decision by Meta.
"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," said YouTube on Twitter, addressing its decision to allow the return of Trump, adding that he has to comply with the site’s content rules like any other account.
2/ This channel will continue to be subject to our policies, just like any other channel on YouTube.
— YouTubeInsider (@YouTubeInsider) March 17, 2023
However, Trump's favorite social media was Twitter. When he was banned there, he was the first-ever country leader permanently banned on social media platforms.
His Twitter account was restored in November by Elon Musk.
Despite having his Twitter account restored in November, the former president has not returned to that platform yet.
Concerning Trump's return to the social media sphere, the Democrats had warned of the consequences of Trump’s come back, with some lawmakers writing in a letter to the company in the late 2022 to say that Trump should be kept off social media platforms because his return would simply continue his attack on the American democracy by repeating lies about the 2020 election.
As for the Republicans, free speech advocates and others, they argued that maintaining the ban was an undue act of censorship and could put Trump at a disadvantage as a 2024 candidate.
