Trump goes out to recover his Facebook and Twitter accounts for the presidential campaign

Donald Trump ready all his weapons to return to the political arena. After a disappointing result for his candidates in the midterm elections, the former president, who will kick off his 2024 campaign later this month from South Carolina, is rearming his media stronghold on social media.

While Truth Social, the network created by himself when he was expelled from all the others, goes unnoticed and with serious financial problems, Trump asked Meta (the company that owns Facebook) to lift the ban to use it again. This, added to the fact that his Twitter account has already been restored by Elon Musk (but the Republican has not yet tweeted again) would mark Trump’s return to the platforms that catapulted him to the presidency in 2016.

The first step has already been taken. The Trump campaign sent a letter to Facebook’s parent company, Meta, asking them to unlock his Facebook account. “Donald J. Trump is a declared candidate for President of the United States. We believe that the ban on President Trump’s Facebook account has dramatically distorted and inhibited public discourse,” the letter published by NBC reads.

The social network had been warning that in January of this year it would define Trump’s situation. In fact, a decision is expected to be made in the coming weeks. But all bets are on the former president recovering his account and his followers. For media politicians like Trump, the networks are not only a place to expose his ideas, but an inexhaustible source to launch massive fundraising campaigns.

CNN says the decision to allow Trump to return to Facebook and Instagram is being debated by a specially formed internal task force at the company.

The big social networks tolerated many of Trump’s inflammatory comments. Before the attack on the Capitol, they refused to remove false or offensive content because, they said, a president’s comments should be kept because they were news

Be that as it may, the former president has a battalion of admirers in the networks that play a decisive part in the assembly of political campaigns. Trump had 88 million followers on Twitter and 35 million on Facebook and used his personal accounts more than his official ones, including for political statements.

Those who criticize the former president maintain that he repeatedly violated the rules of the networks against hate speech but until the final months of his term, he published everything he wanted without anyone filtering his messages.

Their use of the networks made them an important space for political discourse. Even Trump’s blocking of those who criticized him on Twitter generated a lawsuit and in 2019 a Court ruled that his personal account was a “public forum” that should allow all voices.

The big social networks tolerated many of Trump’s inflammatory comments, until the attack on the Capitol happened. But before that they refused to remove false or offensive content about Trump because, the companies said, despite Trump breaking his rules, comments by a US president should be kept because they made news.

Donald J. Trump is an avowed candidate for President of the United States. We believe that the ban on President Trump’s Facebook account has dramatically distorted and inhibited public discourse.

The relationship between the network companies and Trump was fluid. To such an extent that the former president invited the founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, to a private dinner at the White House in 2019.

As early as 2020, Facebook and Twitter began adding warning labels to many of Trump’s messages. For example when he urged to vote twice: once by mail and once in person. “When the polls open, go to the polling place to see if his vote was counted. If not, vote!” he posted.

In June, Facebook removed an ad that used the inverted triangle the Nazis attached to concentration camp inmates, and gradually the major platforms sought to moderate the president’s messages.

Facebook removed a comment saying the United States had “learned to live” with flu season “just like we’re learning to live with covid, which in many populations is far less deadly.” Twitter hid that message and required users to click to view it.

But all that is the past. Now the former president is trying to recover one of the engines that took him to the White House. The question is if he will be as effective as before.