Trump Campaign Urges Facebook To Remove Block On His Account As He Gears Up For
Topline
Former President Donald Trump issued a formal plea to Facebook to follow in Twitter’s footsteps and reinstate his account after both were blocked in the aftermath of the January 6 Capitol riots–a request that comes as Trump is gearing up for his third presidential run.
Key Facts
Trump’s campaign, in a Tuesday letter to Facebook parent company Meta, said the ban “has dramatically distorted and inhibited the public discourse,” NBC News reported.
Trump’s campaign stopped short of threatening a lawsuit and instead requested a meeting with the company “to discuss President Trump’s prompt reinstatement to the platform.”
Facebook locked Trump’s account on January 7, 2021, and said it would conduct a review of the decision two years later.
Forbes has reached out to Facebook for comment.
Contra
The tech watchdog nonprofit Accountable Tech is advocating for Meta to continue its ban on Trump’s accounts and has launched a billboard campaign outside of Facebook offices in Washington, Menlo Park, Calif., and New York City. “If Facebook looks at what Trump has been putting out publicly in the past few years, it is clear he is not a reduced threat to safety, If anything, he has gotten more emboldened,” Executive Director Nicole Gill told The Financial Times.
Key Background
Trump was indefinitely suspended from Meta platforms Facebook and Instagram after he repeatedly used his social media pages to deny the results of the 2020 Presidential Election and make false claims that the election was “stolen” as his supporters stormed the Capitol. Facebook cited two posts Trump made on January 6 in its decision to suspend his account, including statements about a “fraudulent election” and another posting where he urged rioters to go home, but suggested their actions were justified. “These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously viciously stripped away,” he wrote. Twitter brought back Trump’s account in November under new owner Elon Musk, whose politics have increasingly shifted right. Musk’s decision followed a public poll in which 51.8% of the 15 million voters said Trump should be reinstated. Trump has yet to tweet from the account however, and has used his Truth Social platform as his preferred social media vehicle.
What To Watch For
Following a relatively scaled-back announcement of his 2024 presidential run on November 15, Trump announced this week he would make his first campaign appearance in South Carolina on January 28. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Gov. Henry McMaster will join him at the State House in Columbia, where he is expected to announce his campaign leadership team.
Tangent
Meanwhile, Trump’s supporters in Congress are gearing up to target tech companies for censorship that Republicans say unfairly skews the political landscape in Democrats’ favor. The House, in its first week under…
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