Facebook to keep ban on Donald Trump in place for at least two years

Credit: Brett Jordan/UnsplashCredit: Brett Jordan/Unsplash

Facebook has announced that its ban on former President Donald Trump will lift in January 2023 as long as no further risk to public safety at the time.

The social media giant on Friday said that it may reinstate Trump's Facebook and Instagram pages in January 2023. However, when that time comes, Facebook said it would need to reevaluate the public safety risks of allowing the former president back onto its services.

"We will evaluate external factors, including instances of violence, restrictions on peaceful assembly and other markers of civil unrest," Facebook wrote in a blog post. "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 re-evaluate until that risk has receded."

Facebook noted that, if Trump is allowed back, there would be a strict set of sanctions that would be triggered if he continued to violate the platform's content moderation guidelines.

The announcement is the first timeline Facebook has given for the Trump ban. The move comes about a month after the company's independent Oversight Board upheld the ban on the former president but demanded a review of Facebook's policies and procedures.

Facebook banned Donald Trump following the Jan. 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol. Other social media companies, like Twitter, have also banned the president.

In its blog post Friday, Facebook said it had determined that a two-year ban was an appropriate length of time to allow a cooling-off period after the Jan. 6 insurrection attempt.

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