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It should have been a surprise to nobody that President Trump was banned from all the major social media platforms. It happened sooner than many people expected (while still later than many people would have liked) but we all knew it was inevitable. President Trump of course could see this coming as well and planned for it, a lot of those plans didn't actually work out but the plan that most people knew about was his desire to start his own platform, or his own Twitter.
Most people assumed that what he meant by this was that he was going to start his own full blown social media site (and this may have been his original intention). The reaction that many normal people had to this was "Why doesn't he just join Parler?" since Parler is run by conservatives who wouldn't deplatrom him. There were also many less normal people who had a reaction that sounded like, "Why doesn't he just run an instance of some decent federated social media software?" since it is nearly impossible for anyone to be deplatfromed if they do that. Many of these people are confused since they haven't been told the answer to these questions, in case you're one of these people I'll tell you, both of these options suck. Sure Parler is morally superior to Twitter (fun fact: pornography is not a violation of Twitter's rules) and provides the same functionality but it lacks Twitter's ease of use, I know because I used to have a Parler account I barely used it because its UI was terrible. Then federated software wasn't an option because it is too niche, remember we are talking about a man in his 70s whose Twitter password was MAGA2020! and had no two factor authentication, getting Trump to use any sort of federated software is simply out of the question since it is a miracle that he knows how to use his iPhone.
So because Trump was not going to use anything that already existed there were lots of people who were (and still are) quite exited to join Trump's social media platform. It was only a few weeks ago when I was talking to one of these people who refused to believe me when I said that a social media site founded by Trump would inevitably suck. Think about it, Twitter and Facebook have billions of dollars and years of experience, a newcomer is not going to do something better, and this is of course assuming that you see any any value in social media. A Trump social media site was, and always will be, destined to fail.
Now what I, nor the person I was talking to at the time, hadn't realizes was that Trump had already started his own platform, it just wasn't a social media platform like everyone had expected it to be, instead he put a page on his website titled From the Desk of Donald J. Trump where he now posts all of the things that he would have formally tweeted. The first post on this page happened in late March and now that I think about it I was aware of it at the time, but like everyone else I didn't recognize it for what it actually was because it was not the social media platform that everyone expected, instead it was just a platform that Trump needed.
President Trump recognized that free speech doesn't really exist on the internet and that replacing social media with social media doesn't fix the problem so he solved the problem by creating a platform for himself that wasn't trying to act like social media, a platform that was completely his own. He did it right, and while I doubt that anyone connected to Trump has ever visited my website I am quite impressed that the solution they found was the solution to replacing social media that I suggested here months ago. There is really no reason why anyone should be on social media, especially controversial public figures and politicians. Social media, Twitter especially, amplifies hate, we've all heard of a Twitter hate mob but I don't think there has ever been a Twitter love mob. Social media is a place where public figures go to get attacked, no minds are ever changed on social media and no battles are ever won.
I'm glad that Trump now has his own platform, I hope more people start their own as well, I've done it and you should too.