Trump Launches New Platform Months After Twitter, Facebook Ban

Former President Donald Trump has just launched a new segment of his website a few months after promising a return to social media with ‘his own platform’. 

Before now, Trump was banned from Twitter following the Jan. 6 Capitol riots. He had been a prolific poster on that platform before and during his presidency. 

The Former President Trump went ahead to launch a communications platform on Tuesday, May 4th 2021, which, according to Fox News, will serve as “a place to speak freely and safely,” and will eventually give him the ability to communicate directly with his followers, after months of being banned from sites like Twitter and Facebook. 

Trump claims he now has a place to speak freely and safely, posting comments, images, and videos. The platform, which he calls “Straight from the desk of Donald J. Trump”, will eventually give him the ability to communicate directly with his followers. 

Having a pattern like that of Twitter, the platform is hosted as a running blog of Twitter-length commentary from Trump. People can sign up for post alerts on the platform through their email and phone numbers and are allegedly able to like them, although that function doesn’t appear to work as of publication. Users are also allowed to share Trump’s posts on Facebook and Twitter. The Twitter sharing option doesn’t currently work, but that of Facebook does allow people to share Trump’s posts. 

The Blog’s technology appears to have been built by Campaign Nucleus — the “digital ecosystem made for efficiently managing political campaigns and organisations,” created by Trump’s former campaign manager, Brad Parscale. 

Though the platform allows Trump to post, and allows his followers to share the posts by the former president to channels like Twitter and Facebook, users are unable to “reply” or engage with his posts. According to a spokesperson at Fox News, “This is just a one-way communication.” 

Furthermore, Trump’s site has a sign-up list for users to type in their phone numbers and email addresses in order to get notified whenever he shares a new message. 

The Former President’s advisor Jason Miller, however, told Fox News that Trump’s website is a great resource to find his latest statements and highlights from his first term in office, but this is not a new social media platform. “We’ll have additional information coming on that front in the very near future”, his advisor added.