Trump’s new social media network may NOT stay Online for long

Following his exile from social media in the early months of 2021, Donald Trump may be poised to return, circumventing his Twitter ban by building his own social media site. The platform could be available in “two to three months,” according to Jason Miller, the Trump aide who broke the story.

While the announcement appears to be ambitious, creating a social media platform is relatively simple. In just two weeks in 2004, a basic version of Facebook was developed. Since then, developments in software development and cloud computing have made it much easier to quickly build a social media network.

However, maintaining the new platform online after its launch could be challenging. It’ll have to escape the fate of Trump’s followers’ favorite “free speech” social media sites. After being accused of hosting content related to the violence at the January 6 Capitol protest, one such website, Parler, was removed from app stores and taken offline.

Hackers and “trolls” hostile to Trump’s version of politics would almost certainly attack the website, attempting to shut it down or causing chaos. Trump’s latest social media site could launch in two to three months, but keeping it up and running would be the main challenge.

Trump’s plan came after Twitter and Facebook agreed to “deplatform” him in the aftermath of the Capitol riot on January 6th. The Trump ban on Twitter is indefinite. The ban on Facebook is currently being reviewed.

These actions, together with Parler’s removal, have driven millions of users, including many Trump fans, to use a smattering of niche social media sites. Many of these users are expected to rush to a Trump-created website, ensuring it at the very least a strong user base. “It is going to be big,” Miller said in his speech.

The new social media app could theoretically be designed and released in a matter of weeks. Software developers have access to easy-to-copy coding models, which eliminates the need to start from the ground up.

However, in order to serve millions of future customers, the new platform’s architecture would need to scale rapidly. Trump’s network would literally collapse under the pressure of new users if the proper infrastructure isn’t in place to sustain expansion. Cloud computing technology is traditionally supported by tech companies such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud.

Trump’s platform could be created as a mobile app that can be purchased from app stores, a website that can be viewed by web browsers, or both. An app will be particularly vulnerable to the whims of the more popular app stores, such as those run by Google and Apple, who could fail to host it if behavior on it was found to breach their terms of service.

One of Trump’s toughest obstacles is convincing all of these providers, who are basically the web’s gatekeepers, to embrace his agenda. Even if they do, the precedent set by Parler could lead to them terminating their hosting at any point if users’ aggressive language were left unchecked.