'I should have' banned Facebook, says Trump lamenting leniency during presidency

The former US President Donald Trump, whose Facebook account is suspended for two years over the January 6 insurrection of Capitol Hill, on June 8 said “perhaps I should’ve” banned the social media giant during his four-year tenure. Lamenting his leniency towards social media during his presidency, Trump issued an official statement through his website said that he should have taken action against Facebook but its founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg “kept calling” the former US President. Trump also said that Zuckerberg kept telling the ex-US President “how great” he was before hinting at a possible ban in 2014 when he is planning to contest for the presidency again.

While criticising social media giants including Facebook and Twitter, Trump said on Tuesday, “Who are they to dictate good and evil if they themselves are evil? Perhaps I should have done it while I was President. But Zuckerberg kept calling me and coming to the White House for dinner telling me how great I was. 2024?”

Trump’s remarks followed Nigeria’s ban on Twitter because the microblogging platform deleted a tweet from Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari’s account for violating its rules and threatening genocide. However, the deleting of the post was met with Nigerian telecoms operators complying with a government directive Friday to suspend access to Twitter indefinitely. The former US President who has also been ‘permanently suspended’ from Twitter “after close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them — specifically how they are being received and interpreted on and off Twitter” and citing the risk of further violence after January 6 attack on Capitol Hill.

Trump said, “Congratulations to the country of Nigeria, who just banned Twitter because they banned their President. More COUNTRIES should ban Twitter and Facebook for not allowing free and open speech—all voices should be heard. In the meantime, competitors will emerge and take hold.”

Why is Trump banned from Facebook for two years?

Confirming a “time-bound penalty” on an exceptional case involving Donald Trump, Facebook said in a statement on June 4 that “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 under the new enforcement protocols. We are suspending his accounts for two years, effective from the date of the initial suspension on January 7 this year.”

“At the end of this period, we will look to experts to assess whether the risk to public safety has receded...If we determine that there is still a serious risk to public safety, we will extend the restriction for a set period of time and continue to re-evaluate until that risk has receded,” it added.

IMAGE: AP