New York (AFP)
Relatives of Donald Trump, ousted from Twitter and other major social networks, are indignant and cry censorship but to communicate with the general public, the alternatives remain limited for the moment.
"Freedom of expression is dying and is controlled by all-powerful leftists," lamented the eldest son of White House tenant Donald Trump Jr.
"Who will be the next to be silenced?"
asked the president's personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, while the head of American diplomacy, Mike Pompeo, rose up against "the Left" which "has been struggling for years to silence voices opposing to her".
The influential Republican senator of Texas Ted Cruz, him, considered "absurd and deeply dangerous" the decisions of the social networks
“Why should a handful of Silicon Valley billionaires have a monopoly on political discourse?” He took offense.
Ironically, all of these messages were posted on Twitter, the social network that was Donald Trump's preferred medium for years before the company decided on Friday to permanently shut down its account.
Two days after the sudden eruption of supporters of the president on Capitol Hill, the social network said it was taking this unprecedented measure in the face of "the risk of new incitement to violence".
Facebook and other services like Instagram, Snapchat or Twitch have suspended the profile of the tenant of the White House for an indefinite period.
The usually rather permissive Reddit discussion platform closed a popular fan forum for the head of state on Friday for violating its hate speech policies.
What then can be the new sounding board for Donald Trump and his supporters?
His son Donald Trump Jr, fearing to be also off Twitter, has already offered to his subscribers to leave their email on his site to receive news.
Not really the most responsive medium.
- Creation of a new platform?
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In a quickly deleted tweet, Donald Trump spoke on Friday evening of the idea of creating his "own platform in the near future" without giving more details.
Conservative platforms prized by Trump's staunchest supporters like Parler and Gab are attracting growing audiences.
Faced with the "record attendance" Friday night and Saturday, Gab even had to add servers, said creator Andrew Torba.
"12 m (million, Editor's note) of visits over the past 12 hours. Growth is exploding," said the boss of this social network on Saturday morning.
Launched in 2016, Gab presents itself as a platform that promotes “freedom of expression” and “individual freedoms”, but is best known to its far-right and even neo-Nazi users.
It was on Gab that the author of a shooting that killed 11 people in a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018 posted numerous anti-Semitic messages before the attack.
Several companies have already banned Gab from using their services, including PayPal, Visa, and Google and Apple's app download platforms.
Speaking from his side is no longer like in its beginnings, in 2018, the prerogative of extremist fringes.
It now welcomes more traditional conservative voices like the star presenter of Fox Nex and close to Donald Trump, Sean Hannity, or the Republican governor of South Dakota, Kristi Noem.
Also a member of Speaking, influential political commentator Mark Levin announced Friday evening that he had "suspended" his Twitter account "in protest against fascism" from the social network, and asked all of his subscribers to join him on the conservative platform.
Mr. Levin also mentioned his account on Rumble, a site that offers like YouTube to broadcast videos but promises its users that they will "never be censored for political or scientific content".
All these alternative platforms, however, remain marked on the right, even on the extreme right.
It is not certain that they will attract an audience as large as the 88 million followers of Donald Trump's late Twitter account.
They could also face the decision of companies facilitating their distribution, like Google which announced Friday that it had withdrawn Speaking from its application download platform.
© 2021 AFP