Truth Social Review: Trump’s Uncensored Social App Is Incomplete
Trump Media and Technology Group, the company founded by Mr. Trump to develop Truth Social, did not respond to requests for comment.
How Elon Musk Bought Twitter
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A blockbuster deal. Elon Musk, the world’s wealthiest man, capped what seemed an improbable attempt by the famously mercurial billionaire to buy Twitter for roughly $44 billion. Here’s how the deal unfolded:
The initial offer. Mr. Musk made an unsolicited bid worth more than $40 billion for the influential social network, saying that he wanted to make Twitter a private company and that he wanted people to be able to speak more freely on the service.
Inconsistent Censorship
In general, there wasn’t enough activity on Truth Social to get a strong sense of whether its content moderation policies were looser than those of mainstream social media. Like Twitter and Facebook, Truth Social has terms of service that state that illegal activity is not allowed on the app.
In some cases, the app appeared stricter than Twitter. While Twitter allows some pornographic content, Truth Social forbids sexual content and language altogether, according to its terms of service. On some posts containing the hashtagged F-word, Truth Social hid the content and displayed a warning about sensitive content. (Tapping on “Show Content” revealed the hashtag.)
To test the app’s claims about political ideology, I published a Truth with a New York Times Opinion article that was critical of the Republican Party, and other posts with news articles about the Jan. 6 riot and how Truth Social’s prospects could be hurt by Mr. Musk’s takeover of Twitter. None of the posts were flagged as problematic. That suggested the app wasn’t discriminating based on politics, just as it had said it wouldn’t.
I also found some accounts that were not allowed to post on Twitter — like The Babylon Bee, the right-wing satire site that was suspended for misgendering a transgender Biden administration official — posting regularly on Truth Social. It was another sign that the app was less restrictive than Twitter.
But Nathaniel Persily, a professor at Stanford Law School, said the notion that Truth Social could be an uncensored social network was ultimately far-fetched. In reality, social networking sites are not truly the internet’s public squares, he said; they are commercial products that are required to obey the law, with communities of users who need to feel safe.
“A platform with no rules quickly descends into child pornography and Nazism,” he said.
Brianna Wu, a video game developer, said policies were necessary to keep social networks a safe place for people to communicate.
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/27/technology/personaltech/truth-social-review-trump.html