As Donald Trump and his supporters flee to fringe social networks, Big Tech must learn from its mistakes

While all major social media platforms have suspended Donald Trump‘s accounts in the wake of the Capitol Hill riots he incited, Twitter’s confirmation it was permanently deleting his account late on Friday night marked a watershed moment in the outgoing US President’s turbulent relationship with Big Tech.

Incensed, Mr Trump appeared to log into the official President of the United States Twitter account to accuse the company of colluding with “the Democrats and the Radical Left” in silencing him, banning free speech and promoting a “Radical Left platform where some of the most vicious people in the world are allowed to speak freely”.

“We have been negotiating with various other sites and will have an announcement soon, while we also look at the possibilities of building out our own platform in the near future,” he tweeted, which were swiftly removed.

At the time of his “permanent suspension”, to borrow Twitter’s tech parlance, Mr Trump had amassed more than 88 million followers, making him the network’s sixth most-prominent tweeter (his predecessor Barack Obama is still its most prolific user, with 128 million followers).

Having long used Twitter to insult fellow celebrities and dismiss global warming as a hoax, Mr Trump gleefully took to the network with renewed vigour as newly-elected President in 2017, praising dictators, threatening and attacking minorities, firing personnel, airing grievances against his country’s traditional allies and spreading the lies that came to define his Presidency.

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Twitter was such a potent tool for Mr Trump because it allowed him to reach the time lines of “normal people” beyond those who already supported him and helped him get elected in the first place, points out Imran Ahmed, chief executive of the Centre for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH).

“Facebook, Twitter and the other networks provided the means for recruitment, operational planning and the steady drip of misinformation that created the conditions in which Trump could both rise and become the avatar for polarisation of the US,” he told i.

“Twitter may have got rid of Trump, but Trumpism is more than just him – it’s a politics of misinformation, confected grievances, identity-based hate and anti-science built around conspiracism – and it will continue to live on on those platforms.

“What we’ve seen in the past week is that when push comes to shove, the big tech companies are able to make decisions on who they want to do business with based on society’s norms – but they only do so when they feel there is an existential threat to the viability of their businesses.”

Digital exodus: where will Mr Trump and his followers go?

Should Mr Trump find himself fully cut adrift from mainstream social media, his hopes for creating a new network will rest on finding a willing web host. This could be complicated following Amazon Web Services’ recent decision to sever ties with Parler, a right-wing Twitter alternative that Google and Apple have also suspended from their respective app stores over its hosting of posts inciting violence.

Gab, a similar free speech site that was forced to find a new host in the wake of reports alleging the suspect in the 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue shootings had made threatening statements on the platform prior to the massacre, has been urging its users to donate to allow it to expand its server capacity ahead of Mr Trump’s joining. Andrew Torba, the site’s chief executive, claims to spoken to the President’s team and has reserved an account for him in anticipation.

Encrypted messaging app Telegram is another favoured medium for Pro-Trump advocates and nationalists thanks to its forum-style channels, and could play host to a new wave of supporters following a 2.2 million spike in downloads after WhatsApp announced forthcoming changes to the data it shares with parent company Facebook for users based outside of Europe.

Streaming site Dlive, which a handful of Capitol rioters used to livestream themselves breaking into lawmakers’ offices, has suspended seven accounts indefinitely and refunding any paid “lemon” donations to be returned to the accounts that them, saying it “encourages freedom of expression providing it abides by US law”, meaning it could be forced to suspend or permanently disable an official channel belonging to Mr Trump under the same guidelines.

Outside the mainstream

Smaller networks such as MeWe, Zello, Wimkin, TheDonald.win (formerly r/TheDonald on Reddit) and Stormfront are other probable mediums Pro-Trump supporters will join in greater numbers in the hope of sustaining communities outside of Big Tech.

While banishment from Twitter is a hammer blow to Mr Trump and his followers in terms of amplifying his messages via a mainstream online medium, it’s down to the likes of Facebook and YouTube to do the same to minimise the harmful consequences of the populist regime he brought to a fever pitch.

Learning from Charlottesville’s mistakes

Consigning the disgraced President supporters to operating outside the boundaries of conventional social media will not spell an end to Trumpism on Big Tech platforms, but it will deprive them of the two things they need to thrive: attention via the amplification of algorithms and a diverse online audience to either recruit new believers from or simply torment and argue with. Hateful echo chambers are far from benign, but they minimise the venomous lies and mistruths being spread to billions of users by easily accessible, conventional means.

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Whether the rest of the major platforms follow Twitter’s example or not, Donald Trump’s banning needs to be recognised as a new dawn in the social age and not a footnote in its history. The industry needs to prove it’s as effective in protecting its users from mass manipulation and preventing the weaponisation of its platforms as it’s always claimed it is – with effective legislation and new, robust rules that stop people like Mr Trump from spreading hate on a global scale.

“It’s not about freedom of expression – the big platforms are not neutral, they reward the people who create engagement, whether that’s anger, fear or joy,” Mr Ahmed concludes. “There’s no point in blaming Nazis, Nazis are always going to be Nazis. It was the platforms that made the decision to indulge them for profit.

“If we live on platforms in which the attention you can generate is more important than both facts and the public good, there’s always going to be a Trump. And there’ll be another one if we don’t fix this.”

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