Which social media platforms have banned Trump and why? An overview
Former President Donald Trump has been blocked from five of the top social media platforms over the years, and all except one have returned his accounts as he runs for re-election in 2024.
During his presidency, Trump saw his Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube accounts all suspended in 2021 following the Jan. 6 Capitol riots.
"Since President Trump first ran for office, liberals in big tech have allowed terrorists and dictators to spout hate speech on their platforms while banning President Trump in a shameless attempt to help Democrats win elections," RNC Spokesperson Anna Kelly told Fox News Digital in a statement. "It won’t work – President Trump’s message is resonating with voters across the country, which is why he had the most successful TikTok launch in history, and he will continue to speak directly to the American people about his agenda to Make America Great Again."
Trump's Snapchat account was suspended in 2021 after the outlet claimed he was responsible for "multiple policy violations." It has not been restored since.
Asked why the profile could not be restored several years later, a spokesperson for Snapchat told Trump's team their terms of service prevented them from reinstating his account.
Trump War Room, an account working on behalf of the former president's 2024 re-election campaign, blasted Snapchat in a post on X.
"Snapchat REFUSES to reinstate President Trump’s account — but then shamelessly asks the Trump campaign to advertise with Snapchat Big Tech is all in for Kamala!" Trump War Room wrote, alongside a screenshot of their communication with Snapchat.
Snapchat's terms of service reportedly don't allow for a terminated user to create a new account or be reinstated to their old one.
In the same message, the spokesperson for Snapchat encouraged the Trump campaign to buy advertisements on the platform to reach a "key audience that can be persuaded to turn out for Trump."
Meta suspended Trump's Facebook and Instagram accounts in 2021, but it reinstated them two years later.
"Two years ago, we took action in what were extreme and highly unusual circumstances. We indefinitely suspended then-US President Donald Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts following his praise for people engaged in violence at the Capitol on January 6, 2021," Meta said in a statement.
"We then referred that decision to the Oversight Board — an expert body established to be an independent check and balance on our decision-making. The Board upheld the decision but criticized the open-ended nature of the suspension and the lack of clear criteria for when and whether suspended accounts will be restored, directing us to review the matter to determine a more proportionate response."
Trump was also suspended from Twitter in 2021, but was given his account back after Elon Musk bought the company.
Youtube said its decision to reinstate Trump to the platform "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."
Musk recently suggested that Google's autocomplete search feature was omitting results for the assassination attempt against Trump.
"Wow, Google has a search ban on President Donald Trump," Musk wrote. "Election interference?" A Google spokesperson told FOX Business that there was no "manual action taken on these predictions."
After being blocked from several of the top social media companies in the U.S., Trump launched his own platform, Truth Social, which he frequently uses to make public statements regarding his 2024 presidential campaign.
Fox News' Anders Hagstrom contributed to this report.