Donald Trump has returned to social media

The waning days of Donald Trump's presidency are reminiscent of the days when his public posts were causing him to be kicked off Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, and he wrote a message about it on his Truth Social messaging platform on Friday afternoon.

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During his complaint regarding the possibility of a potential indictment, Trump warned of "potential death & destruction" if he was indicted for a crime. There was a strong reaction from Trump to the latest developments in the hush money probe and to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, whose office has been leading the investigation into the matter.

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The major social networks in the U.S. have banned Donald Trump citing his threatening rhetoric and the risk of further violence if he continued to use their platforms, more than two years after the Capitol attack on Jan. 6.

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Since then, he has been welcomed back.

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Elon Musk, Twitter's new owner, announced in November that he was reinstating President Trump's account after running a straw poll on his Twitter account asking his followers if they thought he should readmit the former president, who is again seeking his old job in the presidential race.

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"The voice of the people has been heard. Trump will be reinstated,” Musk wrote. The decision had already been foreshadowed months earlier when he said at a conference in May that “permanent bans should be extremely rare, and they should only be applied to accounts that are fake or scam or spam accounts,” and he added, “It was incorrect to ban Donald Trump.” 

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There has been a lot of news surrounding Trump's return to Facebook and Instagram since Meta announced it at the end of January. As Meta's president of global affairs, Nick Clegg wrote in a blog post, "the public needs to be able to hear what their politicians are saying - the good, the bad, and the ugly - so that they can make informed choices when they go to the polls."

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Most recently, Google's YouTube announced that Trump would be able to post videos again after his ban was lifted last month.

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The question now is - what are the rules from here on out?

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So far, Trump has been relatively quiet on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Rather, he has been posting daily musings about modern politics on Truth Social, stating in a post this week that Democrats are "interfering in our elections, their new form of cheating! ”

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He hasn't tweeted since January 8, 2021, which is more than a year ago. There have been a few snippets of Trump's rallies posted on Facebook, along with some fundraising blasts he sent out. On YouTube, he has a new video, which was posted on March 17, in which he announces to his 2.7 million subscribers that “I AM BACK! ”

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There is little reason to believe that Trump's behavior will change after he was punished by companies for his past antics. The posts he makes on his Truth Social account are littered with examples that prove the opposite. The advocacy group Accountable Tech published a report recently stating that it found over 350 Trump posts on Truth Social that would be in violation of Facebook's safety rules if they were published.

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In Jessica González's opinion, he is using Truth Social to incite people, as well as to incite the media and technology industry. According to her, some of his posts were reminiscent of what he had been saying before January 6, in some ways.

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The former President of the United States Donald Trump's Facebook account was reinstated by Meta after Free Press sent the company a letter urging it to permanently reinstate the ban that was imposed by Meta on him. The message referenced a draft report on the American attack on January 6. The House of Representatives Select Committee stated that since the uprising, "the risk of violence has not abated."

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In January, Meta stated that it had not been possible for the risk to public safety to be adequately diminished in light of Trump's return to Facebook and Instagram.

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There was an announcement at the time that the company had implemented "new guardrails" in order to deter repeat offenses of Trump, including limiting his reach and removing the reshare button for content that was questionable.

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“Should Mr. Trump post any further violating content, the content will be removed and he will be suspended for a period of time that will range from one month to two years, depending upon the severity of the violation,” Meta continued.

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In an attempt to avoid commenting on Trump's posts on Truth Social, a Meta spokesperson pointed to the company's statement released in January regarding the matter.

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When asked for comment by Twitter, Musk responded with a poop emoji that has become his signature retort.

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There was no comment from YouTube regarding this story. In a prior statement, Leslie Miller, vice president of public policy for Google's video unit, stated that the company had carefully considered “the continued risk of violent behavior in real life, as well as balancing it with the necessity of ensuring that voters have the same opportunity to hear from major candidates in the run-up to an election.”

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"There will be no change to the channel's policies as it is still subject to the same policies as every other channel on YouTube," Miller said.

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There are a few clear restrictions on Trump, but they have nothing to do with the content of the posts that he makes on Truth Social. Trump has agreed to post on Truth Social six hours before publishing a post on a competing social networking website in accordance with an agreement between the two parties.

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In spite of this, that exclusivity deal is slated to end in June of this year.

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“The real test will be when we see if the platforms are going to be willing to abide by the guardrails that Meta has placed in place,” González said, adding that the limitations that Meta has imposed are “just weak.”

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Media Matters CEO Angelo Carusone expressed his concern about the spread of disinformation and the inciting of violence on Truth Social and Rumble, two conservative social networks, as a result of Trump's election campaign. His many millions of followers are on Facebook and Twitter, two apps that have minimal guidelines on the content that can be shared, and he can use them to guide them to those other apps.

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Carusone said that Trump's social media habits are posing a greater risk now that Musk is in control of Twitter, which is a greater risk than it used to be.

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"Twitter has consistently been one of the first companies to make a policy change at the start of a new policy period" in regard to content and disinformation, Carusone explained. He also said that Twitter would no longer be a vanguard in the fight against disinformation or extremism under Musk's leadership.

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Musk has stated that he is only serving as Twitter's CEO temporarily and hopes to appoint a successor by the end of the year, when he hopes to begin the process of searching for a successor. Ahead of the 2024 elections, it remains unclear whether any other social network will assume a leadership role regarding policy matters, as we approach the election year.

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Gonzalez said that it wouldn't be a surprise if Trump's inflammatory posts create headaches for the major social media networks in the future because it's only a matter of time.

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González believes that the more he feels cornered and the more he feels that his power and freedom are under threat, the more we're going to see him lash out. "As he has proved time and time again, he will have no restraint when it comes to his behavior.”