January 25, 2023

Trump Is Allowed to Return to Facebook and Instagram

Former President Donald Trump speaks about filing a class-action lawsuits targeting Facebook, Google and Twitter and their CEOs on Wednesday, July 07, 2021 in Bedminster, NJ. Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post/Getty

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Donald Trump will regain control of his Facebook and Instagram accounts with tens of millions of followers after his suspension following the January 6, 2021, attack, Facebook parent company Meta announced Wednesday. Trump had been banned from these social media accounts after he helped to incite the violent attack on the US Capitol. Meta said a series of “guardrails” would be in place for the former president.

Trump announced his candidacy for president in November and his campaign petitioned Facebook to allow him to return to the platforms. The former president is also reportedly planning his return to Twitter after Elon Musk lifted the company’s ban on him in November.

The restoration of his social media accounts will give Trump a loud and widespread voice that has been quieted by the bans over the last two years. Facebook says that it will penalize Trump, including another suspension from its platforms, if he violates its rules.

Time will tell. Before his suspension, Facebook had a history of looking the other way when the ex-president violated its rules. Whatever the case, Trump could be tanking his own social media company, Truth Social, if he starts posting on other platforms. And it could, as my colleague Mark Follman has reported, further political violence.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

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