Facebook Board Upholds Donald Trump Suspension. Could His YouTube,Twitter Accounts Return?

Facebook’s oversight board has reached a decision on Donald Trump’s eviction from the platform, upholding his suspension but ordering Facebook to either reinstate him or ban him permanently within six months. The former president was booted from all major social media platforms in wake of the Capitol riots on Jan. 6.

The board’s decision is a blow for Trump’s dwindling chances to return to social media, leaving only the possibility of a return to Youtube and the slim odds that Facebook will decide to reinstate him fully.

YouTube has pledged to eventually reinstate his account, but when asked about a timeframe in March CEO Susan Wojcicki said that an “elevated violence risk still remains.”

“We will turn the account back on,” she said. “But it will be when we see the reduced law enforcement in capitals in the U.S, if we don’t see different warnings coming out of government agencies, those would all be signals to us that it would be safe to turn the channel back on.”

Trump's prospects on Facebook don’t look much better. While the oversight board said the platform couldn’t keep him in limbo, it supported the original reasoning for his ban.

Facebook told CBS News that it was “pleased” with the decision and maintained that Trump’s ban was “necessary and right.”

"We will now consider the board's decision and determine an action that is clear and proportionate. In the meantime, Mr. Trump's accounts remain suspended," Facebook's statement read.

Twitter originally positioned its ban as permanent and hasn't changed the decision. Twitter CEO Ned Segal told Yahoo Finance that there were “no changes” in its policy.

"When you step back and think about our policies, we want to work hard to be consistent, to be transparent so people know exactly what to expect from us," Segal said. "We don't have an oversight board like [Facebook]. Our team is accountable for the decisions that we make. There is no changes to anything we have talked about in the past."

Trump himself seems to be reading the writing on the wall. He’s hinted for months that he might try to start his own social media platform, though conservative attempts have a poor track record.

He took a step in that direction Tuesday, starting his own “From The Desk Of Donald J. Trump” blog for his press releases, with posts that can be shared on the platforms he was kicked off of. Jason Miller, an advisor to Trump, clarified on Twitter that the blog was not the social media platform that had been promised.

Still, depending on how Trump uses it, it could help fill the void of frequent, direct communication with his followers.

He shared his thoughts on the Facebook decision Wednesday through the platform.

“What Facebook, Twitter, and Google have done is a total disgrace and an embarrassment to our country. Free speech has been taken away from the president of the United States because the radical left lunatics are afraid of the truth, but the truth will come out anyway, bigger and stronger than ever before,” Trump posted. “The people of our country will not stand for it! These corrupt social media companies must pay a political price, and must never again be allowed to destroy and decimate our electoral process.”