Nick Clegg, Meta's president of global affairs, is charged with deciding whether Donald Trump will return to Facebook and Instagram in 2023, Clegg said on Thursday.
Clegg said he was seriously debating whether Trump's accounts should be reinstated and that he will consult the Facebook board of directors, Mark Zuckerberg, and outside experts, while he spoke to the board of directors at an event held in Washington by Semafor.
He said it was not a capricious decision. We will look at the signals related to real-world harm to make a decision on whether or not Trump will be reinstated at the two-year point in January next year. After the 6 January 2021 Capitol riot, the former president was suspended from a number of online platforms, including those owned by Meta, following the 6 January 2021 Capitol riot during which Trump used his social media accounts to praise and perpetuate the violence.
Meta permanently suspended Trump's accounts for two years while Twitter banned him, to be later re-evaluated. A temporary ban on Facebook was upheld by Facebook s oversight board in May 2021, a group of appointed academics and former politicians meant to operate independently of Facebook's corporate leadership.
The board returned to the final decision on Trump's accounts to Meta, suggesting that the company decides whether to make the ban permanent in six months. The decision will be made by January 7th, 2023, according to Clegg.
Clegg previously served as Britain's deputy prime minister and joined Facebook in 2018 as vice president for global affairs and communications. He was promoted to the top company policy executive position in February.
In the years since he began at Meta, Clegg has seen the company through a number of scandals including scrutiny of its policies during the 2016 US presidential election, Facebook's involvement in the persecution of the Rohingya in Myanmar, and revelations made by whistleblower Frances Haugen.