Trump Campaign Weighs Alternatives to Big Social Platforms

[Burnt Reynolds 5,058]

Amid disputes with Facebook and Twitter, the president’s team mulls whether to push supporters toward a different platform or put more emphasis on its own campaign app. 

The Trump campaign, known for its social media savvy, is hitting digital roadblocks.

Facebook’s decision to remove Trump campaign political ads and posts last week, citing its policy against organized hate, surprised campaign officials. It added urgency to internal discussions about devising workaround plans if some of the world’s largest social media companies continue to remove or block content from the campaign and President Trump, people familiar with the matter said.

The Trump campaign has also made a big push to boost its app downloads since it launched in April, people familiar with the efforts said. The app was designed to directly engage supporters while collecting data that could be used to boost donations, volunteer efforts and turnout on Election Day. Following stay-at-home orders during the coronavirus pandemic, the Trump campaign has used the app to stream its regular broadcasts and other content.

The Trump campaign owns content and distribution on the app rather than relying on a third-party platform and worrying about restrictions imposed on its activities, the people said.

Mr. Parscale has started to more publicly hint at the use of other platforms. On Thursday night, around when Twitter labeled Mr. Trump’s tweet, Mr. Parscale tweeted: “Hey @twitter, your days are numbered” and linked to a post from him on Parler. Around the same time, White House social media director Dan Scavino, who sometimes operates Mr. Trump’s Twitter feed, tweeted a link to his own Parler post, tagging the platform and #MAGA. A Twitter spokesman declined to comment on the posts.

Parler co-founder and Chief Executive John Matze said the platform has more than one million users, compared with about 100,000 around a year ago. “We are thrilled to see that support for Parler is growing and being utilized by anyone who seeks out and/or champions free and fair debate in a true public square,” he said, adding that he has not heard from the Trump campaign since Messrs. Parscale and Scavino posted about Parler. “It is not Parler’s job to weigh in on political matters. We believe in free speech and fair elections. Period.”

 

 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-campaign-weighs-alternatives-to-big-social-platforms-11593003602

 

We're finally seeing the move, and it needs to be done more comprehensively to allow transition time to maximize effect for the election. 

 

Another thing I didn't know was Trump has an app, which I'll be using now as well.. 

 

It's funny because Parler, Gab, et al aren't reinventing the wheel here, this is precisely how social media was all the way until 2016. It's common sense that if these were the policies of Twitter, Facebook, etc. back then, it would've never taken off at all. What clearly grew the platforms was simple adherence to basic principles operating as a true public square. 

 

The left's new methodology of sowing chaos and wedging people is to try and psychologically frame free speech sites, or the concept of free speech itself as "right wing". It's hard to wedge a culturally strong and prosperous society and more were uniting under the America First agenda of Trump, which the left, neocons, neoliberals, couldn't have. These founding principles were not merely for government but were cultural implements separating civilization in the enlightenment era and on from the dark ages that clearly none but the most heinous few wanted. They're liberal principles used against the very evangelical conservatives of yore who sought to dispel freedom to criticize, mock and parody religion, blasphemy as they called it. Those evangelicals I bet are quite jealous of today's left and their "progressive" success at trying to force non-American and unacceptable norms of censorship down our throats in a way the evangelicals could only dream of.

 

With more going to Parler now, you can expect efforts to destroy the platform to take off in a similar way with what happened to Gab. The left caricatured capitalism and speech to tell people to go to another platform, and it isn't a surprise that as people have, the left have worked hard to get these sites shut down. Free speech is uniting, and it's the future, whether the left like it or not.