Meta announced on Friday that former President Donald Trump's Facebook and Instagram accounts would no longer face the increased suspension penalties, as updated blog post declared. As it said, the reason behind this was to ensure the fact that all Presidential nominees are equal on its platform before the 2024 Presidential election.

When Meta restored Trump's social media accounts in January 2023, the company levied harsher punishments against him than it would against others. For instance, for violating Meta's community standards, the former President would have been banned for up to two years using increased penalties. Now, the company is saying that Trump will face the same punishment as any Facebook or Instagram user.

Under those policies for regular users, if a user breaks Facebook's Community Standards, they receive a warning. After two strikes, they can be banned from posting features of Facebook for short periods. Only after seven violations will the user be banned from posting for an entire day and 10 strikes to get a month long ban.

"In judging our duty to enable political expression, we believe that the American people deserve to hear from the nominees for President on like terms," said Meta in a blog post.

Meta initially banned Trump following the January 6 insurrection in 2021, back when Facebook was Trump's favorite way to communicate with his supporters online. The company's then chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg said the risks of allowing President Trump to continue using their service during this period "are simply too great before barring him from it entirely." Nowadays, Trump shares frequent updates on Facebook, for 34 million subscribers but posts much more often on Truth Social.

The company is dialing back its harsh penalties against the former President just ahead of the 2024 Republican National Convention. However, Meta says that these heightened suspension penalties were a response to extreme circumstances, and were never deployed against Trump.

Earlier this week, Donald Trump published a threatening statement targeting Mark Zuckerberg on Truth Social. The former President boasted he would put "election fraudsters" in jail and called the CEO of Meta out by his newest nickname, "Zuckerbucks." In warning Zuckerberg to "be careful," Trump seemed not to have learned his lesson about making threats.