Former US President Donald Trump is reportedly pressuring Meta to have his Facebook account restored. According to NBC News, the Trump campaign sent a letter to Meta on Tuesday, asking that a meeting be scheduled to discuss his “prompt reinstatement to the platform.”
Recall that Trump’s Facebook account was suspended in 2020 by Meta following the role he played in the Capitol riot. The suspension, which was set to last 24 hours, was later changed to an indefinite one that has remained until this day. Meta, however, announced that it would revisit the decision to ban Trump in two years following recommendation from the Oversight Board.
It is been two years since that decision was made, and Meta is yet to announce if the ban would be lifted soon. In a statement per NBC News, Meta said a decision would be made “in the coming weeks in line with the process we laid out.”
A couple of weeks ago, the Financial Times reported that Meta is set to decide whether to allow the former president regain access to his social media accounts.
Recall that Meta had earlier said it will decide by January 7 whether or not to allow Trump return. The FT, however, reports that the decision could be delayed until later in the month, citing person familiar with the matter.
Meta has already set up a working group to focus on the Trump suspension, according to those with internal knowledge of its operations, the FT adds. The working group includes, staffers from the public policy and communications teams, as well as the content policy team.
In November, Elon Musk confirmed that Twitter had lifted the suspension it placed on Trump’s account after the riot that took place at the Capitol Hill.
The lifting of the suspension runs contrary to an earlier statement made by Musk where he affirmed that no decision on account reinstatements would be made until the company had put together a “content moderation council” to decide on such moves. The decision to reinstate the account however, was made after Musk threw it up to other users on the platform.
Signs of what he was up to became evident when the accounts of The Babylon Bee, Kathy Griffin and Jordan Peterson were all reinstated. Shortly after that, Musk then launched a Twitter Poll, asking for people’s views if he should reinstate that of the former President.
