After being banned from Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and basically every other social media platform that wasn’t exclusively catering to Nazis, Donald Trump tried to use a new blog to disseminate his belligerence. And apparently, it didn’t go very well because the blog has now shut down entirely, just a month after its launch.
Trump’s blog was structured to allow him to write what were essentially tweets, but presented his messages as if they were official statements. The website’s design was even meant to be evocative of Twitter, Trump’s preferred method of communication.
The site’s “From the Desk of” page was labeled a “feed” and gave his supporters the option to like or share his ramblings—or to donate.
image: screencap, donaldjtrump.com
Trump’s team also tried to circumnavigate his Twitter ban by setting up a new Twitter account that tweeted Trump’s already tweet-like statements from the blog. It got shut down almost immediately.
And now the blog itself has been scrubbed from the internet. Donaldjtrump.com is still active but the “From the Desk of” page is gone. Trump’s senior aide Jason Miller told CNBC that the blog was never meant to be permanent.
“It was just auxiliary to the broader efforts we have and are working on,” he told the outlet. But it sure seems like even an auxiliary effort should have lasted more than a month!
Unless the embarrassingly low traffic reports that came out last month had something to do with this cut-and-run. The Washington Post reported prior to the shutdown that Trump’s “heavily promoted blog is seeing fewer visitors than the pet-adoption service Petfinder and the recipe site Delish.”
And as NBC News wrote in May:
The Trump blog’s low engagement numbers seem to suggest that the practice of deplatforming, or cutting off a user from their followers and thereby severing networks of common followers, is broadly effective and can be used to reduce hate speech and glorification of violence from mainstream platforms. It also seemingly restricts a public figure’s ability to attract a similar audience on an alternative platform.
There you have it. Deplatforming works and no one wants to read Trump’s hateful ramblings when they’re not right in front of them and easily shareable. Success!
(image: Sarah Silbiger/Getty Images)
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