"Successful start-up social platforms require massive amounts of patience and personal investment, and Trump isn’t really known for either of those."

"Trump’s biggest obstacle is time. He wants the media spotlight back immediately or back by the 2022 midterms, and he can’t build a real social platform by then."

Said Nu Wexler, a communications consultant (who's worked for Twitter, Facebook and Democratic campaigns), quoted in "Trump is sliding toward online irrelevance. His new blog isn’t helping. The former president’s aides said his new online presence would ‘redefine the game.’ But his heavily promoted blog is seeing few visitors" (WaPo).

Even if Trump could build a "real social platform"...

To keep people interested, a new social network would also need to overcome more established social media sites’ “network effects” — the fact that so many users’ friends and family are on there already, locking them in — and “engineer all the tricks that the other platforms use to drive engagement and virality, which is no easy feat,” said Ashkan Soltani, the former chief technologist of the Federal Trade Commission.

“Those companies have had years and years of engineering and data and A-B testing of what evokes people writ large,” he added. “The way they are engineered to amplify divisive content; the way they use your friends and your friends’ activities to grab you; the way they use notifications to draw you back in — all those aspects aren’t going to be present in whatever thing Trump creates.”

The way they are engineered to amplify divisive content; the way they use your friends.... 

Yes, good thing Trump — who does know how to "evoke people" — can't cause a "real social platform" to come into existence for his personal/political use. It's bad enough that these generally available sites — the ones that all exclude Trump — are so vast and so highly functional. I would like to see Trump back on these places — Twitter, Facebook, etc.  Even as he's "sliding toward online irrelevance," it's more worrisome that we're all sliding — greased by this social media (and the mainstream press) — into shallow recirculation of the divisive content and pointless attention grabbing.

"This sounds pretty terrifying to me. It's a country full of alienated people, broken communities, and estranged families. Instead of fixing the broken social fabric..."

"... we are further retreating into our anxious selves and the mental health crises will undoubtedly worsen. Except for the tiny minority of students who can truly benefit from this, the effects of a broad move to online learning on the socialization of young people would be profound and I'd rather not imagine them."

Says one highly rated comment at "Online Schools Are Here to Stay, Even After the Pandemic/Some families have come to prefer stand-alone virtual schools and districts are rushing to accommodate them — though questions about remote learning persist" (NYT). 

Another comment: "If this last year has taught me nothing else, it's that the 'digital world' is not a life worth living, and I am an introvert. I did not exactly have a successful social life in school, but I would still never trade the experience for being a hermit at home. People need to learn to get along with each other now more than ever before. Online school is an acceptable back up for times when in-person schooling is not possible such as when a student is sick, what would otherwise be a snow day, pandemics, travel demands and the like, all of these are better than the prior alternative of no school. But that's all it is, a mediocre substitute for the real thing and real people."

It's worth clicking through to see the photography at the top of the article. I really can't decide what feelings and ideas the NYT meant to highlight. It's a mother enveloping her 11-year-old son in a hug. The sun is on his face and he looks blissful. The text says he suffers from some sort of mental condition that makes him "apprehensive around other students" and that he's loved the on-line school program. But, we're told, he's going back to school, so I'm going to say that the NYT means to say all-encompassing motherly love cannot be the end point. That boy needs to get back into the real world of other kids. Which is what the commenters are saying.

"What does all of this mean for colleges suddenly forced to move online because of the coronavirus pandemic?"

"The only thing they can create right now is distance.... They do not have the time or resources necessary to map out the rest of their courses and build online versions on the fly that can accommodate large numbers of students. They will not be able to train their teachers how to teach or their learners how to learn. There will be little personalization.... [I]t’s a mistake to say that colleges will be 'moving to online education.' All they’ll really be doing is conducting traditional education at a distance. That will be hard enough."

From "Everybody Ready for the Big Migration to Online College? Actually, No/One consequence of coronavirus: It will become more apparent that good online education is easier said than done" by Kevin Carey (NYT).

Carey is the author of "The End of College: Creating the Future of Learning and the University of Everywhere" (2016). He's for on-line education.