Former President Donald Trump’s official YouTube account, which has been suspended since shortly after the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol storming, has been reinstated following similar recent moves from Twitter and Facebook.
The video sharing site announced Trump’s account restoration over Twitter Friday morning.
“Starting today, the Donald J. Trump channel is no longer restricted and can upload new content. We carefully evaluated the continued risk of real-world violence, while balancing the chance for voters to hear equally from major national candidates in the run up to an election,” YouTube stated.
“This channel will continue to be subject to our policies, just like any other channel on YouTube,” it continued.
Trump’s last video, titled “President Trump thanks Law Enforcement at the Southern Border,” was uploaded on Jan. 12, 2021.
YouTube initially announced on Jan. 12, 2021 that Trump’s account account was being suspended on for a “minimum” of seven days “in light of concerns about the ongoing potential for violence.”
In March 2021, the CEO of YouTube parent company Alphabet, Susan Wojcicki, said Trump’s channel was still suspended “due to the risk of incitement to violence,” and that it would remain suspended until it was “safe to turn the channel back on,” as reported by Reuters.
Trump after the Capitol storming was banned or suspended from most major social media platforms, which largely cited risks that he would use the platforms to incite violence, as reported by Axios. Since then, his main social media presence has been on Truth Social, which he founded in October 2021.
The restoration of Trump’s YouTube account comes two months after the Facebook and Instagram parent company, Meta, announced the former president would be let back onto both of those platforms.
Twitter’s new CEO, Elon Musk, unbanned Trump’s highly popular account shortly after taking over the site late last year.
So far, Trump has not returned to Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter, and continues to post regularly on Truth Social.
