I always figured Donald Trump would eventually be told, “You have the right to remain silent,” but I didn’t expect him to have silence as his only option. That’s basically the case as just about every social media platform has blocked his attempts to post and basically told the potus to stfu and gtfo. I have mixed feelings about some parts of the ban (especially the timing which would have been better before the violence), but man am I enjoying the quiet. We may not yet have our country back, but at least we got our platforms back. The bigger tech issue here is that too few companies have way too much power over our democracy. We meant to build a distributed network where everyone would have a voice, and we ended up building centralized megaplatforms with CEOs who have the power of Zeus. The tech shutdown includes everything from Stripe refusing to process payments for the Trump campaign, to the whacked out, rules free Twitter clone called, Parler losing its host (Amazon Web Services) and being unable to find a new home. Here are all the platforms that have banned or restricted Trump. I wouldn’t underestimate Trump’s ability to find a way to post. My friends and family have tried much more draconian interventions to get me to quit my habit, and they never work.

+ This was a headline I didn’t expect to see (mostly because it’s so ridiculous). NYT: Stripped of Twitter, Trump Faces a New Challenge: How to Command Attention. (When this story first went up, I counted Trump’s name in 17 of the stories on the NYT homepage.)