Introduction
On October 21, Donald Trump announced his new social media platform called Truth Social. Since getting suspended from Twitter and Facebook, his reach on social media is limited. As this platform is owned by the Trump Media and Technology Group, he will not have to worry about arbitrary censorship and suspensions.
That all sounds good on the surface, but underneath, I see a plethora of issues with this strategy. In fact, I find Truth Social to be impractical to the point that it’s pointless.
About The Name…
Off the bat, the name just rubs me the wrong way. On one hand, I sort of get why Trump went with that name. For example, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube would label and remove content that they deem as “medical misinformation” despite the content not being so (check out the "Inconsistent Enforcement" section of this article of mine). On the other hand, why “Truth Social”...?
Maybe I am being too nitpicky here, but I don’t think it’s ever a good idea to place virtues in a name. It comes off as arrogant. Plus, there's a good chance that the virtue becomes less so descriptive and more so ironic. Domestic terrorist group, ANTIFA, is one such example where despite the name standing for “anti-fascist”, the members engage in fascistic activities, including but not limited to beating people up in the streets, arson, and vandalism (check out my article on the the costs of riots).
Oh… Another One of These “Free Speech” Platforms
While not explicitly saying Truth Social is a “free speech” platform, Trump implied as such when he described it as a place that “gives a voice to all”. However, as I have pointed out with other platforms, they tend to not keep that promise. In fact, they sometimes break that promise before the services even take off.
I will cite my two previous articles on Frank Speech and GETTR as examples. With the former, owner Mike Lindell advertised it as a “free speech” platform and yet, Frank Speech has rules that prohibits profanities and the use of "God's name in vain". When I wrote about GETTR, I pointed out at the troubling Terms of Service where there was a clause that implied that you cannot talk badly about GETTR on GETTR.
At times, the “free speech” platforms ironically become who they oppose. This was the case with Ruqqus. Ruqqus was an open-source Reddit clone that advertised itself to be a “free speech” forum and had a system that would limit the moderators’ power to censor users. However, all of that was for naught when it began to ban several guilds such as the MGTOW guild and would never provide a good reason for those bans. Eventually, the platform became a wasteland and shut down earlier this month.
Obviously, I cannot make a judgement on whether Truth Social is an actual “free speech” platform or just another Frank Speech/GETTR as it has yet to launch. But I have seen this song and dance play out enough times that I am skeptical. Plus, there are already enough centralized platforms. We don't need more.
There Are Already Several Options
Another reason why I find Truth Social to be pointless is that there are many options already available for Trump to use. His base already has places like Gab, Parler, and GETTR to go to. I see little potential for Truth Social to garner a distinct audience from those three.
As I already mentioned in a past article, Trump has a Rumble account. If you check his channel now, he nearly has 850K subscribers and his uploads garner between tens to hundreds of thousands of views. This is very impressive when you compare that to Joe Biden’s “The White House” YouTube channel which has over twice as many subscribers, but its videos have much lower view counts and get ratio’ed to oblivion. Not to mention, YouTube’s userbase completely dwarfs Rumble’s.
This shows that wherever Trump goes, people will flock to him. Instead, Trump should be looking towards more open platforms and diversify his presence so that he can reach out to people outside of his usual audience. Minds, for example, would be a good platform as it has a different audience from Gab from my personal experience. Places like Bastyon (formerly Pocketnet) and PeakD are really good decentralized options, though considering Trump is anti-crypto, I highly doubt he would be interested.
Closing Thoughts
I have many more things to say about Truth Social, but these are my top reasons why I find the platform to be absolutely pointless. You (Trump) are tired of Big Tech’s stranglehold on the virtual public square and want to fight back? That’s cool and I agree Big Tech needs to be knocked down a few pegs. But there are already many other platforms that are doing it right now. Why not establish a presence there? What’s the point of making what is likely a Frank Speech/GETTR clone?
Oh… and if you still want to launch your own platform, perhaps it would be a good idea to not copy Mastodon’s code, claim it as proprietary, and consequently, violate the AGPLv3 license. Just saying…
Well...I hope he doesn't give us another reason to dislike the things he does.