Trump forced them to deplatform him. If you've ever dealt with a true troll you knew this is where it was headed. There's no real bravery in this. And I understand why they struggled with the decision. Everything about this dude was unprecedented and unpresidential.

We had a dude who trolled our podcast for a long time. Every time we addressed it he got worse and worse. He branched out to our friend's podcasts and started to harass them as well. There was no reasoning with him.

People physically threatened him. People reported him. Blocked him. All sort of shit. He would send people to harass us on Twitter in his name. He eventually amassed a small following of fellow trolls.

He never truly stopped harassing us. We just stopped responding or giving him any attention. We didn't allow him the platform of our podcast by responding to him.

He died. And he was such a troll people didn't even think he was dead. Folks went to his funeral to verify.

It's been a couple years and this is literally the first time I've ever talked about him in years. Because essentially he was only as annoying or powerful as we let him be.

And in a weird way that's what Trump feels like. A troll who got powerful because so many let him be.

He should've been relegated to side show status. He was a circus act that people simply couldn't take their eyes off of. And he utilized that attention into power. The reality show president. And like more reality TV he gravitated to the basest most vile aspect of humanity.

And people LOVED him for it. Loved him for being terrible or loved how much calling out his terribleness made us feel righteous. But all of it added up to giving him the power he craved. It should've never been this way.

Deleting his account at this late stage is SOMETHING. But he should've been de-platformed when he was being racist in 2016 and before that even. Social media let the algorithm be the morality of the site.

If it generates clicks then it sticks.

This can happen again.

I'd really like to know what Facebook, Twitter, et al are going to do with the next Trump. Or even THIS Trump after he's out of office and we find out that the office wasn't what gave him power. It was the access online that gave him so much power.

Those insurrectionists all "gathered" in Facebook groups, Twitter hashtags, chatrooms and message boards. They radicalized in broad daylight and no one felt it had to be stopped because it was white people. And white people get to do whatever they want.

Going forward I think it would be a huge mistake to say "We will let someone be a white supremacist on our apps / websites until they start a coup. If they do that then they're banned."

We need social media company regulation in America like they have other places.