Politics

One flip side to all of this: While deplatforming can reduce Trump’s overall reach, it could certainly make his remaining followers more ardent. Watching the most powerful technology companies in the world act at the same time, if not in unison, against onald Trump has, for his followers, likely bolstered his claim that tech companies were working against him — and his followers.

In this case, Holt says, “A base of voters that’s been told that there’s a global tech industry conspiracy against them will likely be more hardened in their beliefs - when they see what’s happened to Trump. “And if Trump was right about that, was he right about the election stuff?"

Which gets at what we really ought to care about when we make predictions about what happens to Trump’s reach in his post-Twitter era: What happens to the people he used to reach? Regardless of whether they follow him to a different platform, they’re still going to hear from … somebody on mainstream social media. And if it’s not Trump, who’s going to fill that void?