In October last year, former President Donald Trump announced that he would start his own social network called Truth Social. The announcement came after Trump himself had been banned from Twitter for life – in the wake of the storming of the US Congress on January 6 last year.
The reason Trump was banned was that Twitter believed the then president had used social media to incite his supporters to use violence. Facebook also went the same way and banned Trump.
On Monday, it became known that Elon Musk is pocketing as much as $ 44 billion – over $ 400 billion – for Twitter. Musk says he wants to make the platform better than ever with new features, make the algorithms available and ensure freedom of expression.
The question is what Donald Trump will do if he gets the opportunity to return to Twitter.
Trump did not storm out
– Want it more than anything else
Ståle Lindblad is an advisor in the fields of digitization and social media. In a column in Kom24 Lindblad says this about Musk having acquired Twitter:
– It may turn out to be a big problem for Donald Trump and his social platform Truth Social.
Lindblad thinks Trump wants to get back on Twitter, if he gets the chance.
– If Musk lets in Trump and his supporters, then there is no longer any reason to be on Truth Social, Lindblad says to Dagbladet.
He points out that Truth Social only has 1.3 million registered users, and that even fewer use the service. On the other hand, Twitter has 217 million active users.
Before Trump was banned, he had over 80 million followers. However, he himself says that he will not return to Twitter.
– I will not return to Twitter, and will stay on Truth. I hope Elon buys Twitter because he’s going to make improvements and because he’s a good man, Trump said in an interview with Fox News.
Lindblad does not believe in this:
– Both Trump and everyone around him want more than anything else to come back on Twitter, even though Trump says he does not want to. He has hardly talked about anything else since he was thrown out, Lindblad says.