Daily US Times: Facebook has suspended Donald Trump’s Instagram and Facebook accounts for two years.
The former US president was barred indefinitely from both social media platforms in January in the wake of posts he made on the US Capitol riots, but Facebook’s Oversight Board criticised the open-ended penalty last month.
Facebook said Donald Trump’s actions were “a severe violation of our rules”.
Mr Trump, a Republican, said the move was “an insult” to the millions who voted for him in last year’s presidential election.
Facebook’s move comes as the company is also ending a policy shielding politicians from some content moderation rules.
The social media giant said that it would no longer give politicians immunity for deceptive or abusive content based on their comments being newsworthy.
Mr Trump’s ban was effective from the date of the initial suspension on 7 January, Nick Clegg, Facebook’s vice-president of global affairs, said in a post.
The post added: “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.”
Mr Clegg’s statement noted that on his return, Mr Trump will be held to “a strict set of rapidly escalating sanctions,” for any violations.
Mr Trump said in a statement that Facebook’s ruling is an insult to the record-setting 75m people, plus many others, who voted for us…”, adding that “They shouldn’t be allowed to get away with this censoring and silencing, and ultimately, we will win. Our country can’t take this abuse anymore!”
You may read: US adds 559K jobs as firms still struggle to fill positions
