Twitter’s stated rationale for the ban was that in the wake of the Jan. 6 insurrection, Trump’s continued use of the platform to cast doubt on the results of the 2020 presidential election amounted to a credible incitement of violence. That judgment call was greeted with both glee and relief from liberals who long blamed Trump’s use of the platform for the spread of misinformation, hate speech and general political chaos. Conservatives in turn were largely outraged, adding yet another grievance to a long-brewing grudge against the private moderators who police the public sphere of discourse. Many on the right quickly predicted the platform’s downfall, envisioning a world where it would be supplanted by a balkanized archipelago of ideological alternatives like Rumble, Parler and former Trump aide Jason Miller’s unfortunately-named Gettr.

Disappointment soon reigned on both sides of the aisle. False information about Covid-19 and elections still abounds on Twitter, despite the company’s newly-aggressive stance toward it — including a ban of Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who surely took it as a high honor to suffer the same social-media fate as her liege. The platform also remains as central to the mainstream political discourse as it ever has, driving ever-higher levels of revenue even absent the man who glided into the Oval Office on its pixelated blue wings. And even in exile, Trump still maintains something like a Twitter presence with his periodically-transmitted statements from Mar-a-Lago, if they admittedly lack the earth-shaking force his morning tweets once carried.