Facebook, Instagram Suspends Donald Trump For Two Years

Social media giants, Facebook has announced a two year suspension of former United States President, Donald Trump.

This suspension will be effective till at least January 2023 — and will only be reinstated “if conditions permit.

If it will be recalled months ago, Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, announced that American President, Donald Trump will be blocked from making further posts on Facebook and Instagram till at least his transition is over.

The decision came after President Trump uploaded praised rioters who engaged in violence at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 

This led to a freeze in his account on January 7 with CEO Mark Zuckerberg citing the risk of ongoing violence if the then-president were allowed to remain on the services. 

According to Variety.com, Facebook’s two-year sanction against Trump for “severe violations” was deemed to be “long enough to allow a safe period of time after the acts of incitement, to be significant enough to be a deterrent to Mr. Trump and others from committing such severe violations in future, and to be proportionate to the gravity of the violation itself,” Nick Clegg, Facebook’s VP of global affairs, wrote in a blog post Friday.

According to Clegg, “Given the gravity of the circumstances that led to Mr. Trump’s suspension, we believe his actions constituted a severe violation of our rules which merit the highest penalty available under the new enforcement protocols. We are suspending his accounts for two years, effective from the date of the initial suspension on January 7 this year.”

Once the two-year period is up, in January 2023, “we will look to experts to assess whether the risk to public safety has receded” in deciding whether to reinstate Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts, Clegg continued. “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 reevaluate until that risk has receded,” the exec wrote.

If and when Trump’s suspension is eventually lifted, Clegg added, “there will be a strict set of rapidly escalating sanctions that will be triggered if Mr. Trump commits further violations in future, up to and including permanent removal of his pages and accounts.”