Facebook had suspended Donald Trump’s account until 2023
Facebook on Friday announced that it had suspended former US President Donald Trump’s account until at least January 7, 2023.
According to Facebook, it will then assess the circumstances to see if Trump should be allowed back on.
The said move guaranteed Trump won’t be able to post from his Facebook account, which had tens of millions of followers, prior to the 2022 midterm elections. However, Facebook’s announcement did leave open the possibility that his suspension could lift ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
Nick Clegg, Facebook’s vice president for global affairs, on Friday said in a post that once the two years was up, Facebook “will look to experts to assess whether the risk to public safety has receded”.
“If we determine that there is still a serious risk to public safety, we will extend the restriction for a set period of time and continue to re-evaluate until that risk has receded,” Nick said.
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Nick framed the two-year suspension, which came after supporters of Donald Trump stormed the Capitol building, as “long enough to allow a safe period of time” after the acts of incitement, to be significant enough to be a deterrent to Donald Trump and others from committing such severe violations in the future, and to be “proportionate to the gravity of the violation itself”.
Also, Nick announced new rules for “enforcement protocols to be applied in exceptional cases such as this”.
The said change came in the wake of the unprecedented step Facebook took of indefinitely suspending Donald Trump in January — and the way its independent oversight board rebuked it for the arbitrary nature of that suspension.
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