- Donald Trump is getting his Facebook and Instagram accounts back.
- Meta revoked Trump's Facebook and Instagram accounts indefinitely after the Capitol insurrection.
Donald Trump is getting his Facebook and Instagram accounts back — and it could be very bad news for Truth Social.
On Wednesday, Nick Clegg, Meta's president of global affairs, said the former president's Facebook account would be restored in the next few weeks.
Meta and Twitter revoked Trump's Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter accounts indefinitely after the Capitol insurrection in 2021. Shunned from mainstream platforms, Trump founded and launched Truth Social in February 2022.
Matt Navarra, a social-media consultant, said it was "inevitable" that Trump's return to Facebook or Instagram would negatively affect Truth Social.
For the time being, Trump continues to heap praise on Truth Social. In a post about his Facebook account's reinstatement, he heralded his platform's growth as "outstanding" and dubbed its future "unlimited."
Referring to his suspension, Trump wrote: "Such a thing should never again happen to a sitting President, or anybody else who is not deserving of retribution! THANK YOU TO TRUTH SOCIAL FOR DOING SUCH AN INCREDIBLE JOB."
Even though Trump will soon be able to post on Facebook and Instagram, it's unclear if he actually will.
The former president has been posting exclusively on Truth and has a contractual obligation to post there first.
According to an SEC filing by the Digital World Acquisition Group SPAC, Trump agreed he wouldn't post on another platform for six hours after the initial Truth Social post. However, the clause didn't apply to political messaging.
The agreement is up for renewal in June but Trump has privately told people close to him he doesn't want to renew an exclusivity deal with the platform, per a report from Rolling Stone.
If this becomes reality and he is no longer exclusively tied to Truth Social, it could reduce the platform's appeal.
Truth Social is built on Trump's brand
Trump is Truth Social's figurehead and many of the platform's users want to hear directly from him.
Galen Stocking, a researcher at Pew Research Centre, told Insider that Truth Social was "tightly connected to Donald Trump" and he was likely "the most prominent individual on the platform."
According to Stocking's research, around half of the 200 most prominent accounts on Truth Social say they are right-leaning or pro-Trump in their profile.
"We don't know much about the ownership because some of that's obscured through various entities," he said, "but it's clear that it's branded with Donald Trump and he's touting it as connected to him in many ways."
Trump evangelists may lose faith
"For most people, Donald Trump is the face of Truth Social," Navarra said. "The appeal of the platform to many of those that joined originally would have been his presence."
"So for him to spend less time there or to spend more time on the major mainstream platforms is going to reduce the appeal to some people," he said.
Navarra said some users could also jump ship from the platform if they were only there for Trump.
"It's hard to say whether it will be a sudden mass exodus," he said. "But I think if Trump is back on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter and on Truth Social less or not at all, it will certainly have a significant step change downwards in terms of any growth, new followers, and general level of activity on the platform."
Navarra added that Truth Social would likely still be of value to many users, however, because of its lighter approach to content moderation.
"The conversations and the things that are permitted on Truth are not things that are quite as easy to get away with on other platforms," he said.