We knew it was likely coming, but it still feels unsettling that former President Donald Trump will soon regain access to his Facebook and Instagram accounts. Meta, the parent company of the two platforms, claims that “new guardrails” are in place to keep the former president in line. I have doubts about that, but I’m less concerned about the actual content that Trump posts or his campaign puts out in his name than the financial windfall he could reap.
As The Atlantic’s Charlie Warzel argues, Facebook is no longer the culture-shaping juggernaut it once was. Both Trump and Facebook “appear to have lost the juice,” he writes. “Many people still support Trump, and many people still use Facebook products, but the shine is gone — and that matters.” Trump himself seemed to acknowledge the site’s recent decline. “FACEBOOK, which has lost Billions of Dollars in value since ‘deplatforming’ your favorite President, me, has just announced that they are reinstating my account,” he crowed on his TruthSocial platform. “Such a thing should never again happen to a sitting President, or anybody else who is not deserving of retribution!”
The biggest effect of Trump’s return to Facebook isn’t the reopened fire hose of lies that got him suspended, but a renewed stream of cash to his 2024 coffers.
From where I’m sitting, the biggest effect of Trump’s return to Facebook isn’t the reopened fire hose of lies that got him suspended, but a renewed stream of cash to his 2024 coffers. It’s true that the Trump political machine already has a ton of money in the bank — sort of. As of late November, the various political action committees either controlled by Trump or supporting him were sitting on roughly $95 million. But as The Guardian recently reported, only a small fraction of that amount can be used in direct support of Trump’s campaigning. His Make America Great Again PAC, which was born out of his previous campaign committee, had about
Read the full article here
