Donald Trump has launched a social media platform, following the former U.S. president's ban from several social media services, including Twitter. After several political events leading up to and following the presidential elections back in November, there had been an increased clamping down on accounts by social media services, with Trump's accounts one of those feeling the full effect. Since then, Trump's office had been teasing the launch of a new platform.
Throughout the presidency, Trump relied heavily on social media to relay thoughts and plans on ongoing events in the United States and around the world. However, due to several dubious statements posted online following the U.S. Capitol riots that took place in January, many of the major players in the social media space removed Trump's access to their respective services. Since then, there has been major debate over the bans, with Facebook even referring its ban decision to its oversight board, only for the board to return the decision back to Facebook.
Launched as a "From the Desk of Donald J. Trump" webpage on Trump's official website, Trump's version of social media is now available to anyone, and without an account. At present, the platform functions as more of a personal feed rather than a platform wherein other users can interact with Trump and with each other. Posted to the top of the feed is a a short trailer celebrating the occasion, touting the platform as "a place to speak freely and safely."
The platform is not a blank slate. It is already populated with posts dating back to March 24 of this year. The posts cover a variety of topics including social media, politics, and sports. However, as expected, they all echo Trump's political stances. Each post has three buttons attached to it. A heart icon serves as a like button for each post, although the interface does not currently reveal how many likes a post has. Presumably, the button acts as a way for the platform's managers to internally track which posts are popular among readers. Posts also have share buttons for both Facebook and Twitter and clicking on either takes the user to their own accounts on the respective platform to share the post. This option also allows the sharer to attach a custom caption before sharing. Finally, users can sign up with their name, email, and phone number to get notifications for every new post that goes live, similar to how newsletters work.
Though it lacks the ability to enable conversations between users, the platform certainly fulfills Trump's promise to return to social media. Trump's followers can now discuss Trump's comments and thoughts on social media, even without the former president's actual presence on the larger social media networks. While Trump's office is likely to implement communication between users in the future, they'll have to settle for just sharing posts for now.
Source: DonaldJTrump.com
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