After years of censorship of Donald Trump and his supporters, Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta has finally lifted all restrictions on the accounts of the former president.
The Silicon Valley giant, which is notorious for its censorship of conservatives and anti-establishment content, returned Trump’s access to the platforms back in 2023 but still had various restrictions imposed on his accounts.
Meta’s president of global affairs, Nick Clegg, wrote in a blog post that the original decision was a “response to extreme and extraordinary circumstances, and have not had to be deployed.”
“With the party conventions taking place shortly, including the Republican convention next week, the candidates for President of the United States will soon be formally nominated,” Clegg wrote.
“In assessing our responsibility to allow political expression, we believe that the American people should be able to hear from the nominees for President on the same basis.”
Meanwhile, a Meta spokesperson told CNBC that the company was “simply bringing presumptive GOP nominee Trump to parity with President Biden.”
Facebook was widely regarded as having played an important role in Trump’s stunning victory in the 2016 presidential election.
After realizing that free speech helped popularize conservative ideas and candidates, the company led the way in launching an aggressive censorship crackdown against the Trump movement and other populist movements around the world.
Trump was banned from the platform in January 2021 following the January 6th protests against election fraud. Twitter and Google followed suit, although he has since been reinstated on the former following Elon Musk’s takeover of the company.
While Facebook’s influence has waned significantly in recent years, Trump still has a following of 34 million people, with his posts reaching hundreds of millions of people.
He also has 25 million followers on Instagram, a highly influential platform that remains at the forefront of internet culture.
