DeSantis initiated this after they changed their stance. This is purely a political move. Just go check out patriots.win (the successor to /r/thedonald). They're still completely convinced that GFM took all the money and is giving it to BLM. I'm not even being hyperbolic, check it out
DeSantis probably just picked up on the rightwing twitter chatter and is trying to ride the wave
No... I was following along with thedonald.win for a long time. They were preparing for a transition to patriots.win for months before they ditched the old domain. It came from some letter of Trump's who vaguely hinted towards starting a new party called the "Patriots Party". Obviously that never came to pass, but the name stuck
It's literally the exact same platform, style, users, posts, etc. Nothing got "shut down"