Twitter, Meta, TikTok, YouTube, Truth: How a post-ban Donald Trump is reclaiming his digital followers

Since the January 6, 2021 U.S. riots that saw over 1,000 intruders forcing their way into the Capitol building in Washington D.C. to destroy property and attack people, a lot has changed in the world of social media. Twitter (now the Elon Musk-owned X), Meta, and Google-owned YouTube have reversed their ban on former U.S. President Donald J. Trump.

Now that Trump is once again in the presidential race, social media platforms are caught in a dilemma: they are legally bound to ensure a safe experience for all their users, but are also expected to give the former president a platform that is not overly-regulated or restricted when compared to his political opponents.

Also read: Elon Musk donates ‘sizeable’ amount to Trump campaign ahead of U.S. Election 2024 

With this principle in mind, tech companies have been priming their networks and updating their policies for some months now. We’ll look at how several social media platforms are adapting to Trump 2.0.

X (formerly Twitter)

Trump was a heavy Twitter user when he was the U.S. president. On the platform, he ranted about American politics, urged people to vote for his allies, claimed voter fraud, and aired his views on a number of trending topics in strong, sweeping terms—many times without any evidence.​

Twitter took issue with two tweets by Trump from January 8, 2021: in one, Trump referenced his voters and called them “American Patriots,” promising they would be heard long into the future. In another tweet, Trump said he would not be attending the inauguration on January 20, 2021.

“We assessed the two tweets referenced above under our Glorification of Violence policy, which aims to prevent the glorification of violence that could inspire others to replicate violent acts and determined that they were highly likely to encourage and inspire people to replicate the criminal acts that took place at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021,” said Twitter as it announced a permanent suspension of his account.

While Trump first said he would not be re-joining X, he changed his position after Musk formally endorsed him as the presidential candidate and pledged his support.

In August, Musk invited Trump to the platform for a conversation. However, in less than 20 minutes, a tech outage disrupted the interaction even as Musk claimed it was a cyber attack.

“We unfortunately had a massive distributed denial of service attack against our servers,” said Musk, later adding, “As this massive attack illustrates, there’s a lot of opposition to people just hearing what President Trump has to say […]”

As of August 2024, Trump had a little under 90 million followers on X. He posts campaign-related material promoting himself or insulting Vice President Kamala Harris. As of late September, his following had risen to 91 million.

He also shared a morphed video of him and Musk dancing together, as well as a morphed image of a Harris-like figure standing before a crowd waving red flags under a banner with the hammer-and-sickle Communist symbol.

The post, recording over 70 million views, was not challenged in any way.

Trump’s return to X is financially beneficial for a platform that allows members to further monetise post impressions and engagements, and earn revenue through this. For such a model to work well, however, X requires verified accounts to interact with as many (other verified) users as possible.

With Musk’s blessing, X is now Trump’s playing field.

Meta

In 2021, Meta indefinitely suspended then-U.S. President Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts, observing that he praised people who were violent at the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

However, Meta has gradually removed what it called the “heightened suspension penalties” it placed on Trump after the riots. Even so, the Facebook and Instagram-parent said that the former president would have to follow Community Standards like everyone else, and that “new guardrails” had been placed to prevent repeat offences.

“In assessing our responsibility to allow political expression, we believe that the American people should be able to hear from the nominees for President on the same basis,” said Meta in a statement explaining its decision.

Near the end of August, Trump had 34 million followers on Facebook and 26.2 million followers on Instagram, while a “Team Trump” account on Threads had around 286,000 followers.

Trump and Musk’s association is key even on other platforms, as Trump has expressed support for Musk’s electric vehicle aspirations. Trump also said the Tesla CEO could hold an official role if he becomes president again.

A joint Reel posted on Instagram by the verified @realdonaldtrump account and his team shows the former president sitting inside a car and being introduced to its features. The caption notes: “POV: You’re riding in a Cybertruck with President @realDonaldTrump”

In another video post from late August, Trump posted, “KAMALA PUT VIOLENT ILLEGALS—CONVICTED FELONS BACK ONTO THE STREETS.” The post had over 100,000 likes and was not challenged or contextualised in any way.

He also posted deepfakes on Instagram.

While Meta as an organisation has struck a cautious tone where Trump is concerned, the same cannot be said for CEO Mark Zuckerberg. After the assassination attempt against Trump this summer, Zuckerberg publicly praised the former president and said his reaction was “badass,” prompting questions about his political loyalties.

Adding to this, Trump has claimed that Zuckerberg—whose Facebook platform he previously called an “enemy of the people”​—had been calling him​ after the assassination attempt to express his political support and apologise for the way Meta handled media related to the shooting.

However, Meta’s Andy Stone denied rumours that Zuckerberg would be supporting Trump, posting on X in early August: “Mark’s already been public about the fact that he’s not endorsing either candidate, just as he hasn’t in prior elections.”

TikTok

Trump joined the viral video sharing app this June and quickly secured about 10.6 million followers by the end of August. TikTok has approximately 170 million U.S.-based users and is popular with younger users. It is blocked in India, so Trump’s content on the platform is not easily visible in the country.

Trump was against TikTok in the past and wanted to ban the app years ago, but appeared to change his stance; he believes TikTok is keeping Facebook from growing out of control.

Google and YouTube

On YouTube, Trump had 3.15 million subscribers and a little over 4,000 videos close to the end of August. Most of his videos are either promotional in nature, or take aim at Harris. His following on YouTube is smaller than his following on his own platform, Truth Social.

In January 2021, YouTube suspended Trump and stopped him from uploading content for a minimum of seven days, reported the BBC. The restrictions continued for several months. However, he has now regained his posting privileges and puts out one or a few videos every week, such as footage from his own campaigns, or clips with provocative titles criticising his rivals.

“Biden’s Sad and Pathetic Attempt at Copying President Trump’s Bodega Visit Was a Hilarious Failure” was one such video title, posted on April 25 this year. Comments under his videos, which were previously restricted, are also back.

X’s Elon Musk also claimed that Google had a “search ban” on Trump. Google said this was a technical anomaly related to the auto-complete feature in search, reported CBS News in July.

Meanwhile, Trump himself claimed that Google had been “very bad” and “very irresponsible,” and said he had a feeling it would be shut down.

Truth Social

The social media platform known for hosting American right-wing and far-right communities was launched by Trump. The app was founded in 2022 and the former president joined in the same year.

While his following on the app was less than 8 million in late August, he has free reign to post blatantly false information and amplify morphed media. On example is a deepfake of Taylor Swift that claimed the American singer wanted people to vote for Trump. The former president’s response to the post made it look like an official endorsement.

Swift later acknowledged the misuse of a deepfake featuring her, as she endorsed Harris.

In essence

Compared to his presidency years, Trump is relatively more careful about his conduct online, but he has undoubtedly returned to social media with a vengeance. That being said, he returns to a vastly changed digital landscape.

Gutted by layoffs and cost-cutting measures, X is now an open playing field for Nazis, racists, transphobes, and those spreading AI deepfakes. Meanwhile, Meta has made it clear that it is shifting away from politics and hard news on its platform. On the other hand, Truth Social is a wild west for the former president and his most staunch supporters. Meanwhile, Google was heavily scrutinised in court over its alleged market monopoly.

Now reunited with his tens of millions of followers across platforms and emboldened by his surging popularity, Trump spreads misinformation and morphed media with little to no restrictions or penalties.