Facebook's parent company removed the remaining restrictions imposed on former President Donald Trump for praising the Jan. 6 rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol to block certification of his 2020 loss to President Joe Biden.
In a statement posted online Friday, Meta president of global affairs Nick Clegg said the company had lifted the "heightened suspension penalties" put in place when it lifted Trump's indefinite suspensions from Facebook and Instagram last year.
"In assessing our responsibility to allow political expression, we believe that the American people should be able to hear from the nominees for President on the same basis," he wrote.
Clegg warned, however, that all candidates were still "subject to the same Community Standards as all Facebook and Instagram users, including those policies designed to prevent hate speech and incitement to violence."
Under the "heightened suspension penalties," Trump had faced renewed suspensions of between one month and two years "depending on the severity of the violation."
Meta's move was quickly condemned by Biden's campaign, with spokesperson Charles Kretchmer Lutvak likening it to "handing your car keys to someone you know will drive your car into a crowd and off a cliff."
This "greedy, reckless decision will allow Trump and his MAGA allies to reach more Americans with their fundamentally undemocratic, un-American misinformation. Unfortunately, we will all pay the price," he wrote.
Trump was also banned from Twitter, now called X, in 2021 but his account was restored shortly after billionaire Elon Musk bought the company the following year.
Trump, who launched his own social network in early 2022, has only used the site once since then, to post a photo of the mug shot taken after he was charged with racketeering over efforts to reverse the results of the 2020 election in Georgia.
That prosecution is now on hold, as are two others in Washington, D.C., and Florida, and his pending sentencing in New York City over the Stormy Daniels' "hush money" case.
