Ever since he was kicked off Twitter (and Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest, and pretty much every other platform), Donald Trump has threatened to make his own social media platform. Trump’s ideal site seems to be a place where “free speech” is valued above all else–unless that speech is making fun of him, critical of him, or supportive of ideas he doesn’t believe in. And it looks like he might finally be making his 10-month-long dream come true.
Trump says he’s lined up the investors needed to form his own media company, which he’s calling the Trump Media & Technology Group, and a new social platform, Truth Media. According to the New York Times, the deal will net the publicly-traded company $300 million.
literally the only thing i could see in that press release pic.twitter.com/1wKsAFMo3q
— rat king (@MikeIsaac) October 21, 2021
There have been other attempts at creating far-right, free-speech-but-only-if-it’s-pro-MAGA social media platforms. Parler claimed to be a bastion for unobstructed “honest” conversation but also banned a ton of people for seemingly arbitrary offenses. (It was also booted off of Apple, Google, and Amazon app stores for a few months after the January 6 Capitol insurrection for not taking steps to curtail hate speech.) Similarly, the right-wing Twitter knockoff Gettr claimed it “doesn’t de-platform for political beliefs,” but it does allow administrators to add or remove “trending topics” at will, calling their whole “marketplace of ideas” facade into question.
So how will “Truth Media” be different? Well, it won’t. The site claims to promote “open, free, and honest global conversation without discriminating against political ideology.” In reality, it is very clearly centered around Trump’s vanity.
“I created TRUTH Social and TMTG to stand up against the tyranny of Big Tech,” Trump wrote in his announcement of the site. “We live in a world where the Taliban has a huge presence on Twitter, yet your favorite American President has been silenced.”
According to the site’s own terms of service, the “truth” users can express on the site has some strict limits, including an incredibly vague rule banning anything that “interferes with any party’s uninterrupted use and enjoyment of the Site.” (That includes things like “excessive use of capital letters” but is also very clearly set up to be arbitrarily enforced by moderators.)
Additionally, users are not allowed to “disparage, tarnish, or otherwise harm, in our opinion, us and/or the Site.”
So there you go: Truth Media is standing up to the “tyranny of Big Tech” by creating a place for its creators–namely, Donald Trump–to hurl insults and propaganda and probably a ton of lies about the 2020 election, but never have to see anyone criticizing or making fun of them in return. It’s the ultimate safe space.
(via NYT, Rolling Stone, image: Ethan Miller/Getty Images)
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