Often the best way to defeat an enemy is to stop trying to play by their rules and on the ground they’ve chosen. The war against the Long March of the left is not a war of bullets and bodies, but the same advice applies. If the Silicon Valley tyrants won’t offer you an even battlefield, then go off and build your own.
This is the thinking behind the success of Gab. The Big Tech plutocracy tried to annihilate the free speech platform at every level. Each time, Gab and its CEO Andrew Torba just went around them. Kicked off every hosting platform? Then buy your own servers and make your own. Banned from app stores? Put a direct link to your app on your own site. Refused service by payment managers? Set up your own payment platform with crypto.
As a result, Gab is impervious to the sort of summary banishment that saw Parler disappear for months, killing its momentum, perhaps for good. Sure, at times Gab has struggled to manage the sheer weight of new users, but they’ve lived out Nietzsche’s aphorism that what can’t kill them only makes them stronger.
Former President Donald Trump has been no-platformed by Big Tech even more assiduously than Gab. It’s long been rumoured that he would take the same route and build his own platform.
Those rumours appear to be bearing fruit.
Former President Donald Trump is reportedly preparing to launch his own social media platform in the next couple of months after hosting numerous meetings with companies at Mar-a-Lago.
An adviser to Trump made the revelation on Sunday during an interview on Fox News’s “MediaBuzz” with host Howard Kurtz.
In fact, Twitter’s Trump ban has already made the former president stronger.
The fact the president’s been off of social media for a while because his press releases, his statements have actually been getting almost more play than he ever did on Twitter before. I’m not sure if that’s because the length of them are a bit longer. [We] even had one reporter say that she thought it was much more elegant, the way that the president was able to communicate his thoughts and very much looked more presidential in that longer form.
While Trump often used Twitter to devastating effect, expanding his reach to supporters in a similar way to FDR’s radio “fireside chats”, an inherent stumbling block was Twitter’s ridiculous character limit and non-editing facility. Suffice to say that Twitter does not lend itself to deep thought – as evidenced by the gibbering idiocy of most of its users.
If Trump elects to build a battlefield of his own design – something he has more than enough money and clout to do – it will almost certainly deliver an immediate blow to Twitter.
“This is something that I think will be the the hottest ticket in social media. It’s going to completely redefine the game and everybody is going to be waiting and watching to see what exactly President Trump does. But it will be his own platform[…]
There have been a lot of high-powered meetings he’s been having at Mar-a-Lago with some teams of folks who have been coming in. And I got to tell you, there have been — it’s not just one company that’s approached the president. There have been numerous companies. But I think the president does know what direction that he wants to head here. And this new platform is going to be big and everyone wants him. He’s going to bring millions and millions, tens of millions of people to this new platform.”
The Daily Wire
In 2016, Twitter was a garbage stock, rapidly headed for the basement. The Trump election changed all that. Trump derangement was Twitter’s biggest drawcard and its stock climbed spectacularly for the next four years. But since Trump left office and was subsequently banned from Twitter, its stock has been dropping rapidly again. The impact can perhaps be gauged by the fact that Twitter is openly talking about allowing him back.
A Trump-owned social media platform is the stuff of Jack Dorsey’s and Mark Zuckerberg’s nightmares. It would almost immediately win at least 74 million users, if not more. Not just the passionate Trump voters, but the tens of millions of Democrats desperate for a new hit of Trump Derangement. The media would desperately flock to hang on Trump’s every utterance.
Donald Trump saved Twitter – and he may yet kill it.
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