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The closure of Donald Trump’s blog less than a month after it was launched, as traffic dwindled, highlights the importance of social networks in spreading the populist message: after the former president was expelled from Twitter and Facebook, he has simply faded away, his message is diluted, and his followers are quietly returning to normality and forgetting the conspiracy theories they were fed by social networks. Without them and their algorithms, Donald Trump is simply another clown spouting rubbish on his website, with no hope of returning to power any time soon.
In short, Trump’s energy vanishes without the support of social networks, as does his ability to influence public opinion disappear. The raging persona he created during his last stint in office, seventy-seven days during which he went so far as to attempt a coup that could have succeeded in a less robust democracy, has been replaced by a pathetic character isolated and incapable of attracting attention.
During his time in office, the social networks effectively worked on behalf of Trump, and we know why: we are talking about his main client, the one he bought the most advertising from. Early attempts by those social networks to rein Trump in quickly gave way to a hands-off policy, which allowed the former president to dominate the media with frenetically-paced updates. If the campaign allowed him to spread his lies, such as the alleged threat of an “invasion of the United States” by immigrants, and to target those most open to polarization, his time in the White House allowed him to split the country, a mirage artificially fed every day that only came to an end when the social networks finally turned their backs on him.
Leaving behind this pathetic has-been, we must look to the future and establish mechanisms that will prevent others from polarizing opinion and spreading lies through social networks. But sadly, Donald Trump is far from unique. Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, the Brexit campaign in the United Kingdom and other examples show that populism learned to leverage social networks long ago, and that this dynamic is deeply damaging to democracy.
The question now is how to regulate the future of freedom of expression on the web, and that allowing messages of hate, polarization and intolerance is not an option. We will see if we are capable of learning from the past, of preventing misuse of the social networks in the next elections, and hopefully, returning to a reasonable democratic climate.
