President Trump risks losing a valuable megaphone. Facebook risks nothing much at all.
President Trump has, momentarily at least, lost an important friend: Facebook. The estrangement will likely matter much more to him than to the social media site. The platform, where he has 35 million followers, has been one of the president’s most important political tools, a place he’s used to dispense conspiracy theories and spread misinformation. To volley insults against opponents and heap praise on supporters. And a place he used to encourage violence and chaos at the Capitol Building on Wednesday. A day later, Facebook said it was indefinitely barring him from its app and from Instagram and that the ban would last at least through Joe Biden’s presidential inauguration on Jan.20, a step Facebook hopes will cut down on the likelihood of more destruction during the presidential transition’s final days. While it’s not clear how long Trump’s Facebook exile will last, it’s an undeniably large blow. It only leaves him with Twitter to continue communicating with his supporters, and it’s possible Twitter could issue a similar ban, though the company has so far declined to do so.
