Image: Donald Trump. Source: Evan El-Amin / Shutterstock
A slim majority of Americans surveyed in a new poll said they supported Facebook Inc’s (Nasdaq: FB) decision last week to uphold the suspension of former president Donald Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts through January 2023.
51% of registered voters strongly or somewhat support the social media giant’s move, according to a Politico-Morning Consult poll published Monday.
Just 15% of Republicans said they support Facebook’s decision, while 86% of Democrats said they are in favor of the suspension. Independent voters were more split on the issue, with 46% in support of the ruling and 40% opposed.
The poll, conducted between June 4th and 7th, surveyed 1,990 registered voters and has a margin of error of two percentage points.
In an announcement Friday regarding its decision, Facebook said it will reevaluate in two years whether or not allowing Trump back on its platforms poses a risk to public safety.
If Trump’s accounts are reinstated, Facebook has said there will be a strict set of rapidly escalating sanctions that will go into effect if he further violates the company’s content rules.
Trump’s accounts were indefinitely frozen a day after the Jan. 6 attack on the US Capitol after he praised his supporters who stormed it. Facebook then referred the ban to its oversight board to “reach an independent judgement on whether it should be upheld.”
In May, the quasi-independent 20-member board, which includes legal experts, journalists and human rights advocates, decided to uphold the company’s suspension of Trump’s accounts, but said the company must clarify how long the ban will remain in effect.
In the wake of the Capitol riots, Twitter Inc also took action against Trump, permanently suspending his account.
Deprived of his habitual soapboxes, the former president decided to launch his own “From the Desk of Donald J. Trump” blog last month. Introduced as a new "communications platform," the web page lasted all of a month before shutting down permanently last week as it struggled to attract an audience.
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Source: Equities News
