Donald Trump to be reinstated on Facebook and Instagram after Meta ends two-year ban

Donald Trump will be allowed back on Facebook and Instagram after Meta announced it is ending its two-year suspension of his accounts.

The Facebook parent company said in a blog post on Wednesday (25 January) that the ban will end “in the coming weeks”, adding that “new guardrails” will be put in place to ensure there are no “repeat offenders” who violate its rules.

In a statement, Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs, said the public "should be able to hear what their politicians are saying".

The Meta blog post added: “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.”

The former US president was banned from the social media sites after the Capitol riot in 2021. He was suspended on 7 January 7, a day after the deadly insurrection.

Mr Trump, in a post on his own social media network Truth Social, condemned Facebook’s decision to suspend his account as he praised his own site.

He wrote: “FACEBOOK, which has lost Billions of Dollars in value since ‘deplatforming’ your favorite President, me, has just announced that they are reinstating my account.

“Such a thing should never again happen to a sitting President, or anybody else who is not deserving of retribution!”

Other social media companies also kicked Trump off their platforms, although he was recently reinstated on Twitter after Elon Musk took over as CEO of the company, but he has not yet tweeted anything on the site.

Despite the reinstatement, it is unclear whether Trump will actually make a return to the platform after earlier saying: “I don’t see any reason for it”.

He said last year that he saw “a lot of problems at Twitter”, according to Bloomberg, and was quoted as saying: “I hear we’re getting a big vote to also go back on Twitter. I don’t see it because I don’t see any reason for it.”

“It may make it, it may not make it,” he added, apparently referring to Twitter’s recent internal upheavals.

Trump has instead been relying on Truth Social, which he launched after being blocked from Twitter, after he was banned from mainstream social media.