It appeared on Wednesday that Facebook had activated former President Donald Trump's account, months after it blocked the account.
Wednesday afternoon the official Facebook page for Trump was visible, with posts from Jan. 6 the last messages posted.
Trump's Instagram account is also visible. Instagram is owned by Facebook.
After journalists from Buzzfeed and Vox posted on Twitter that they observed Facebook and Instagram had reactivated the former President's social media pages, Facebook's Communications Director responded that Trump remains "indefinitely suspended."
According to reporting from the Los Angeles Times, Trump's pages have always been up, but he himself hasn't been able to post to his accounts on Facebook or Instagram since being suspended on Jan. 7.
The news of the possibility that Trump was back on Facebook and Instagram comes hours after the "From the Desk of Donald J. Trump" blog page was shutteredand all previous posts removed from the DonaldJTrump.com website.
Facebook and Instagram suspended Trump’s accounts following the deadly riots at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.
In a Facebook post the next day, company founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that Trump would be suspended through at least Jan. 20 over “his decision to use his platform to condone rather than condemn the actions of his supporters at the Capitol building.”
A day after President Joe Biden took office on Jan. 21, Facebook said it would refer Trump’s future on its platforms to the Oversight Board.
On May 5, Facebook's oversight board ruledthe platform was justified in banning Trump for violating its policies, however, they said more review was needed and the company should clarify its policies. They said Facebook should opt to impose a time-limited suspension, the company should “assess the risk” that Trump would again use the platform to incite violence.
