That last part was true; people were certainly curious about what Trump might develop. And then on Tuesday afternoon came the answer: Trump's team had made a blog.
Called “From the Desk of Donald Trump,” it’s little more than a Twitter-style list of the “press releases” that had come to replace his frequent posts on his once-favorite social-media site. Those releases, he told Fox News’s Sean Hannity last month, are “better than Twitter, much more elegant than Twitter.” And now here they are, packaged as tweets. With a “share to Twitter” option for his fans.
This, an introductory video proclaimed, was a “place to speak freely and safely,” which, given the context, is a bit like touting the First Amendment freedoms you enjoy in your own home. The whole thing is a bit like not having a cake and also not eating it; it’s a non-social-media site established as a social-media proxy that has no social elements. Speaking to Fox after the site’s launch, Miller hinted that the “hottest ticket” he’d promised was yet to come, with “additional information coming on that front in the very near future.” Okay, sure.
The timing here is interesting. Trump’s team launched “Desk” less than 24 hours before Facebook’s Oversight Board announced that it was, at least for now, upholding the platform’s ban on the former president’s accounts on both its flagship product and on Instagram. As had other platforms, Facebook booted Trump after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by his supporters and following Trump’s demonstrated lack of interest in using his platform to discourage similar resistance to his 2020 presidential election loss.
For a president used to commanding (and seeking) constant attention, the combination of losing his Twitter and Facebook accounts and, shortly afterward, the presidency, must have been jarring. He kept a somewhat lower profile for a while, given the impeachment that followed the Capitol attack and given the ongoing tensions surrounding the transfer of power — tensions Trump had fomented. But over time, his inability to opine directly to his still-enthusiastic base clearly began to wear on him. He’d pop up on Fox News or some random conservative podcast, but it wasn’t the same. His news releases didn’t provide the same rush that watching the numbers on his tweets and posts offered, a metric that he had admitted he paid attention to. Something was missing.
Something was missing for Trump's supporters as well. For many of them, Trump's social-media activity was the news about his presidency. Pew Research Center polling from the period around the election found that only 6 percent of conservative Republicans had a lot of trust in the information provided by national news organizations. Sixty-four percent said that they were following Trump's post-election commentary fairly or very closely.
Politico's Michael Kruse explored this phenomenon, speaking with Trump supporters who were flummoxed by the uncertainty that followed Trump being muffled. At a rally for a Trump-supported candidate in Ohio, Kruse found that many attendees didn't know the candidate had received the endorsement — and at least one who did wasn't sure that the endorsement came from Trump himself as opposed to his team. That direct conduit Trump had with his base had been ruptured.
That conduit can itself be problematic. Research published this month shows that those who relied on conservative and social media for information last year were more likely to believe conspiracy theories about the coronavirus pandemic. Trump himself often used his social-media platforms to spread misinformation, of course, a habit that became increasingly problematic in the wake of the election as Trump struggled to deter his loss of power. Trump used Facebook and Twitter to be heard directly by his supporters — but what he said was often false.
Facebook in particular, though, held a lot of other utility for the former president. It's safe to say that without Facebook he wouldn't have been president in the first place. His team used Facebook to great effect in 2016 — working alongside a Facebook staffer — raising a ton of money and presenting targeted ads to bolster his support. Twitter was his go-to outlet for attention and shaping the conversation. Facebook was the foundation of his actual political operation.
At the heart of the question about Trump’s activity on Facebook is how the platform might have enabled his darkest impulses. The Oversight Board pointed to the urgent need to sever Trump’s connection to his base in the hours after the Capitol attack, a period in which Trump publicly praised those who had participated.
“The Board found that, in maintaining an unfounded narrative of electoral fraud and persistent calls to action, Mr. Trump created an environment where a serious risk of violence was possible,” its decision read. “At the time of Mr. Trump’s posts, there was a clear, immediate risk of harm and his words of support for those involved in the riots legitimized their violent actions.”
The question, then, was whether the ban should be upheld even after that acute risk has passed.
There’s no question that Trump, if returned to Facebook and Twitter, would continue to spread false and provocative claims. You can just look at his “press releases” to see that he maintains the same casual relationship to the truth and dispassion that defined his presidency. It’s rather remarkable that the Oversight Board objected to Trump’s indefinite ban without noting that the habits that were on display on Jan. 6 have continued unabated.
But the board did make one recommendation that gets closer to the heart of the issue. Facebook should, it suggested:
“ …[u]ndertake a comprehensive review of Facebook’s potential contribution to the narrative of electoral fraud and the exacerbated tensions that culminated in the violence in the United States on January 6. This should be an open reflection on the design and policy choices that Facebook has made that may allow its platform to be abused.”
This speaks directly to the perils of the ability for misinformation to flow without impediment. It also gets to the heart of the question that Trump’s ban poses.
He now has his non-social-media site where he can “speak freely and safely” to his heart’s content. But unresolved is how easily he and others — like the post-election “Stop the Steal” effort he inspired — leverage Facebook and other tools to build an infrastructure predicated largely on misinformation in first place. The line between censorship and blocking problematic speech is a blurry one, blurry enough that it’s now at the heart of the conservative media’s poorly defined war on “cancel culture.” Should a president be able to pat insurrectionists on the head while they’re still surrounding the Capitol? Probably not. Should a former president be able to continue saying false things about the results of the election with the specific aim of undermining confidence in it? That falls into a grayer space.
All of this will soon be unimportant, of course, with Trump’s team still promising some world-changing social-media platform, arrival date TBD. In the meantime, the direct link to the base is being stitched back together on his new blog and on a smattering of Fox News interviews. And, in the meantime, there have happily not been any additional attacks on the Capitol.
"direct" - Google News
May 05, 2021 at 08:51PM
https://ift.tt/3ej2YwP
Trump scrambles to reestablish his direct line of communication with his base - The Washington Post
"direct" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2zVRL3T
https://ift.tt/2VUOqKG
Direct
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Trump scrambles to reestablish his direct line of communication with his base - The Washington Post"
Post a Comment