HITTIN’ ROAD, JACK!
Twit exodus after Trump perma-ban
Trump superfans are heading for the Twitter exits.
Just hours after President Trump was permanently banned from Twitter, his diehards on the platform vowed they would move on as well.
“Goodbye Twitter” trended during the early-morning hours Saturday as people continued to come to grips with the deplatforming of the president. “Goodbye Twitter friends. See you @parler,” said one user, citing a social-media alternative to Twitter that has become popular with conservatives.
“I’m a small MAGA account and I have lost 400 followers in 3 days. Goodbye Twitter. You don’t want me, I don’t want you. I’m at Parler @snakeoil. I hope PATRIOTS will come join me!” said another unhappy user, adding a heart and American-flag emoji.
The departed included NHL New York Rangers defenseman and Trump supporter Tony DeAngelo, who called the ban a “disgrace” and said he was moving exclusively to Parler.
Former “Cheers” star Kirstie Alley blasted the ban as tantamount to “slavery.”
While it’s unclear how many Twitter users are moving elsewhere, there has been an exodus for alternative platforms since Trump was banned.
Gab, another free-speech alternative to Twitter, said it was hauling in 10,000 new users every hour Saturday.
Moments after Trump was dumped, Parler crashed, likely because the crush of new users overwhelmed servers. The outage lasted less than an hour.
But Parler — which had 2 million daily active users in October, according to CNN — may not be the safe haven for which the right is hoping.
Google and Apple have stopped offering the app, and Amazon on Saturday booted it from its Web-hosting service.
Trump wasn’t the only world leader facing Twitter’s wrath this week. Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was ordered to delete a tweet casting doubt on the efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccine.
In a statement, Twitter confirmed it was also purging accounts without verified ID information, which is likely adding to the exit count.
“As part of our work to protect the integrity of the conversation on Twitter, we regularly challenge accounts to confirm account details such as e-mail and phone number. Until the accounts confirm additional account information, they are in a locked state and do not count towards follower counts,” a spokesman told The Post.
Trump has also been banned on Facebook until at least the end of his presidential term.
The president still has access to the official @POTUS and @WhiteHouse accounts, which have more than 59 million combined followers, but he will lose both of those when his term expires Jan. 20.
Another account, @TrumpWarRoom, has been retweeting critical coverage of the suspension, but so far has not been suspended itself.
Meanwhile, sensing that his own forced exit from Twitter could be imminent, Donald Trump Jr. blasted the company and urged his followers to subscribe to his Web site, DonJr.com.
The ban also was criticized in a tweet Saturday by once-poisoned Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny.
“I think that the ban of Donald Trump on Twitter is an unacceptable act of censorship,” he tweeted, saying the decision was, in his opinion, “based on emotions and personal political preferences.”