UPDATE: Jan. 25, 5:28 p.m. EST Meta announced Wednesday it would end Donald Trump s suspension from Facebook and Instagram in the coming weeks but that it would institute new guardrails to penalize Trump for repeat violations.

Previously:

In the two days following the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, both Facebook and Twitter removed former President Trump from their platforms, citing the danger his posts posed to the peaceful transfer of power between U.S. presidents.

The timer on Trumps Facebook suspension officially ended earlier this month, but leaders at Meta which is now the name of Facebooks parent company, have yet to announce whether the former president will be allowed back on the platform.

Katie Harbath, who worked at Facebook for 10 years, most recently as the director of the companys public policy team, resigned seven weeks after the Capitol riot. But on the phone with HuffPost last week, she admitted shes somewhat envious of the power her former employer now holds.

How many people get to actually tackle these types of issues, and to be in the decision-making space, versus just sharing their thoughts in the cheap seats? Harbath, now an independent consultant and senior adviser at the International Republican Institute, wondered aloud.

Similarly, under its previous leadership, Twitter permanently suspended Trump after the Capitol attack, citing concerns that his posts would inspire further violence. Trump was a prolific Twitter user: After joining Twitter in 2009, he sent 57,000 tweets, most of which came during the 2016 campaign and his presidency. His most notable post came in December 2020, when he told supporters that his Jan. 6 rally would be wild!

One thing is clear: Trump hasnt changed over the past two years. He has never acknowledged the legitimacy of Joe Biden s presidency and has made no apology for the mob he summoned to Washington, D.C., two years ago, despite the violent coup attempt that followed. In fact, he has publicly sympathized with rioters who had their lives ruined, promising, This situation will be fully rectified after 2024 Election. He has explicitly promised pardons in the past to the same group.

Yet the stage is set for a likely mainstream social media comeback. Shortly after buying Twitter, Elon Musk tweeted a poll to his followers and contrary to his pledge to establish an independent panel for such decisions promptly reinstated Trumps account , citing the results. Trump is still wrapped up in an exclusivity agreement with Truth Social , the social media platform he created, but NBC News and Rolling Stone have reported hes already planning his first tweets back on the platform.

And in an interview with Fox News , Trump confirmed an NBC News report that his campaign had petitioned Meta to restore his account access as well. A Meta spokesperson told NBC News last week that the company would announce a decision in the coming weeks. Meta did not respond to HuffPosts request for comment.

In other words, after two years of his absence, the platforms that formed the foundation of Trumps political success are opening the door for his return. But times have changed, both for Trump and the platforms he employed in his rise to power. Does Trump still wield the massive social media influence he once held?

Lots Of Reasons To Remove Him

In the most urgent sense, Trumps Facebook and Twitter accounts matter because of their reach: Trump has fewer than 5 million followers on Truth Social, compared to more than 87 million on Twitter and 34 million on Facebook. Even accounting for some inevitable bot followers, thats a significant following, and Trump has used those platforms for ill in the past.

He was removed because he helped instigate, mobilize and lead an attempted overthrow of the U.S. government using social media, said Khadijah Costley White, a professor of journalism and media studies at Rutgers University.

White also noted Trumps prolific lies on social media, as well as his posts about his political opposition being killed. Researchers have found correlations between Trumps bigoted tweets and anti-Muslim hate crimes , as well as between Trump attacks on Twitter and increased levels of severe toxicity and threats toward his targets.

There were a lot of reasons to remove him, White said. The question for the social media companies is, how have any of those been addressed? And they really havent been addressed in any way.

For its part, Meta has laid out some ground rules: In June 2021, Metas president for public affairs, Nick Clegg, said Trumps potential reinstatement would depend on whether it posed a serious risk to public safety.

There will be a strict set of rapidly escalating sanctions that will be triggered if Mr. Trump commits further violations in future, up to and including permanent removal of his pages and accounts, Clegg said.

The statement did not address the primary benefit Trump derived from his Facebook account: money . As a candidate, Trump used the platform to draw supporters to rallies and build his war chest.

Former top Trump campaign aide Brad Parscale told 60 Minutes in 2017, was the highway which his car drove on. And Metas chief technology officer, Andrew Bosworth, later wrote of the 2016 election that Facebook could be credited with Trumps election because he ran the single best digital ad campaign Ive ever seen from any advertiser.

I think Trump wants to get back on Facebook because he needs it for fundraising and building up an email list, Harbath said. My gut is, first and foremost, this is money.

Twitter played a parallel role by giving Trump a direct line to the media. As the political journalist Peter Hamby argued a decade ago after observing the media habits of the reporters on Mitt Romneys campaign bus, Twitter is the central news source for the Washington-based political news establishment. Over the years, the platform has served as a public newsroom of sorts: the first place to advertise big scoops, and in many cases a source of material for the next story.

Just as he cultivated tabloid reporters during his early days as a New York City real estate investor, Trump knew how to manage the Twitter-based press corps by giving them what they wanted spectacle and outrage.

Propaganda works best at the intersection of information, entertainment and persuasion, and Trump is a consummate entertainer, hes very effective at highjacking human attention, said Renee Hobbs, a longtime professor of media literacy education at the University of Rhode Island. His return to social media will be a spectacle extraordinaire that journalists will find it hard to look away from, and therefore report on and amplify his insanity to the general public.

Hobbs paraphrased Noam Chomsky on propaganda : People think that propaganda is for the masses, but actually, its for the elites. The elites are the ones who need to be fed a constant stream of propaganda, because theyre the thought-leaders who shape the masses. Trump understands that really well.