Facebook suspends Donald Trump accounts for two years after he stoked violence before Capitol riots
Former US president Donald Trump’s accounts will be suspended from Facebook for two years following the platform's finding that he stoked violence ahead of the deadly January 6 insurrection.
The move is in response to recommendations from the company’s semi-independent oversight board, which last month upheld a decision by Facebook to keep Mr Trump indefinitely suspended but said the company must decide what to do with his accounts within six months.
The board said two of Mr Trump's Facebook posts on January 6 "severely violated" the content standards of both Facebook and Instagram.
On Friday, Nick Clegg, Facebook’s vice president of global affairs, wrote of the two-year suspension: “At the end of this period, we will look to experts to assess whether the risk to public safety has receded. We will evaluate external factors, including instances of violence, restrictions on peaceful assembly and other markers of civil unrest.”
Twitter, meanwhile, suspended Trump from their platform permanently in January.
Alongside the Trump ban, Facebook said it also plans to end a contentious policy championed by CEO Mark Zuckerberg that automatically exempted politicians from certain moderation rules on its site.
The social media giant said that while it will still apply a “newsworthiness” exemption to certain posts it deems to be in the public interest even if they violate Facebook rules, it will no longer treat material posted by politicians any differently from what is posted by anyone else.
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