Donald the Deplatformed
Will Trump continue to have an online presence going forward?
A little bit of apologizing / housekeeping before I get into this post - I’m sorry I didn’t get my usual two posts to you guys last week, let’s just say my heart wasn’t in it last week. I’ll be getting back to the twice-weekly posts this week in addition to posting a few pieces on my new Substack so keep an eye out for that.
On May 5th, Facebook’s Oversight Board handed down its decision to uphold Donald Trump’s ban from the platform. In their decision, the independent panel ruled that Facebook was justified in its January 7th suspension of Trump due to the “seriousness of the violations and the ongoing risk of violence.” However, the matter is not entirely settled as the Board also ruled that Facebook needs to reassess his indefinite suspension as there is no stipulation in the TOS that allows for such a punishment. As it stands, Facebook’s TOS allows for temporary suspensions and permanent account deactivations, but not indefinite suspensions, and in the words of the Board “It is not permissible for Facebook to keep a user off the platform for an undefined period, with no criteria for when or whether the account will be restored.”
Facebook has announced that it will be reviewing Trump’s indefinite suspension in light of the Oversight Board’s ruling and will give a final answer as to what Trump’s fate on the platform will be once the review is finished. The Oversight Board’s decision applies solely to Facebook and Instagram -- Twitter has already permanently banned Trump and YouTube will lift its ban at some point in the future. Both Parler and Gab remain open to Trump taking his microscreeds to their respective platforms.
In the midst of this, Trump finally took the plunge and started his own social media platform. Just kidding -- he launched a blog, From the Desk of Donald J. Trump, that would be considered rudimentary by Y2K standards. The site consists of blocks of text slightly longer than his tweets, no comments section to promote engagement, all on a visually uninspiring backdrop. Overall, it’s a bit surprising from someone as over the top as Trump; he could have started a Substack, likely got the mother of all Pro deals, and caused Twitter to implode from the sheer number of nuclear takes but he went Web 1.0 instead.
Even more surprising is that his blog isn’t doing big numbers. From NBC News
“Trump’s new blog has attracted a little over 212,000 engagements, defined as backlinks and social interactions — including likes, shares and comments — received across Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Reddit. Before the ban, a single Trump tweet was typically liked and retweeted hundreds of thousands of times.”
The posts also get delivered straight into the inboxes of those on his email list -- several times a day according to NBC News -- which may help account for the lack of traffic but were talking about someone who once had 88M followers on Twitter. One would think that at least a few million of his hardcore followers would have a browser window permanently open to Trump’s blog, constantly refreshing the site and sharing each post to social media but that doesn’t seem to be the case.
All this brings the discussion surrounding deplatforming and its effectiveness back into the public sphere. Deplatforming has been shown to work in the past but I don’t see how Trump’s expulsion from social media can be causing his blog engagement numbers to be that low. Trump has several platforms available to him at will that most of us will never have -- he’s a former President, he can call into any news outlet he wants and give an interview. I have no doubt his email list is in the tens of millions. He has no need for social media to promote himself or his writings, I’m sure everyone who wants to know Trump has a blog is aware of it. And yet, his blog hasn’t taken off.
I’m not sure what to make of this -- has social media made people extremely lazy when it comes to consuming and amplifying content? Did everyone forget about Trump as soon as he was shown the door? Could it be that he has lost a good chunk of his relevance because he is no longer President and no longer on social media? Is it that Trump truly is nothing without his Twitter account?
If I had to take a guess, Facebook will upgrade Trump’s indefinite suspension to permanent account deactivation and I suspect YouTube will quietly do the same. After that, Trump will be banned from every major social media platform. He seems to be unwilling to join Parler or Gab, and his blog landed with a thud. I don’t know what this means for Trump’s continued online presence, other than it doesn’t look promising.
I would imagine his blog gets more exposure from people (mainly journos) screenshooting his blog posts and sharing them on Twitter and FB than it does from followers of the blog.