{"id":1325698,"date":"2022-02-22T06:20:00","date_gmt":"2022-02-22T11:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1325698"},"modified":"2022-02-22T08:08:57","modified_gmt":"2022-02-22T13:08:57","slug":"donald-trump-has-to-build-and-protect-truth-social-with-both-hands-tied-behind-his-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/donald-trump-has-to-build-and-protect-truth-social-with-both-hands-tied-behind-his-back\/","title":{"rendered":"Donald Trump Has To Build And Protect Truth Social With Both Hands Tied Behind His Back"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">32<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fdonald-trump-has-to-build-and-protect-truth-social-with-both-hands-tied-behind-his-back%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1325698&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/truthsocialearlyinvitation.jpg\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\" alt=\"image\" \/><\/div>\n<p>Former President Donald Trump\u2019s media group released its Truth Social app for download in Apple\u2019s App Store on Sunday night. By Monday, it quickly hit number one in the App Store\u2019s top charts. Devin Nunes, former GOP congressman and CEO of Trump Media and Technology Group, <a href=\"https:\/\/video.foxnews.com\/v\/6298226709001#sp=show-clips\">told<\/a> Fox News on Sunday that the company plans to make the app fully operational by the end of March, at least in the United States.<\/p>\n<p>The rollout has been beset with not only a few bugs, but more than a few people lying in wait to call out the app\u2019s flaws. Among them are right-leaning, self-described free-market groups \u2013 the ones who make their living telling critics of Big Tech to \u201cbuild their own\u201d while defending the status quo as perfectly acceptable.<\/p>\n<p>The problem with the purveyors of the \u201cbuild your own\u201d argument is that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newsweek.com\/after-parler-ban-rein-big-tech-now-cease-being-free-citizens-opinion-1560631\">it\u2019s an intellectual fraud<\/a>, one they don\u2019t even try to stand behind when people actually do go out and build alternative platforms.<\/p>\n<p>I <a href=\"https:\/\/amgreatness.com\/2020\/07\/04\/if-you-build-it-we-will-trash-it\/\">documented<\/a> this phenomenon at the launch of the Twitter alternative, Parler, nearly two years ago. Parler had a similar rollout to Truth Social. Twitter users, sick of the platform\u2019s double standards and outright pretextual content moderation decisions, flocked to an alternative app in spite of its early bugs and crashes. Within days of its launch, Parler, like Truth Social, topped the charts of most downloaded apps in Apple\u2019s App Store.<\/p>\n<p>But far from supporting robust competition in the marketplace they all purport to valorize, free-market groups and publications across the spectrum relished in mocking the app\u2019s terms of service, its interface, and its users.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\">\n<p>The libertarians at Reason magazine, who are forever finger-wagging at anyone with bad things to say about Big Tech, started<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ENBrown\/status\/1276145641031335940?s=20\"> making fun<\/a> of the platform\u2019s conservative slant. Apparently it\u2019s OK to<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ENBrown\/status\/1276171276940464129?s=20\"> call out<\/a> the biases of Parler\u2019s creators, but not Twitter\u2019s. Got it.<\/p>\n<p>Upset about Parler\u2019s attempt to woo more liberals to its site to create more diversity of views, Mike Masnick of the tech industry blog TechDirt helpfully<a href=\"https:\/\/share.par.pw\/post\/c24624d213ed4e0ca9b2a19d9f547715\"> lit into them<\/a> as a \u201csh-thole platform for -ssholes and trolls.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Gleefully, the writers at Reason, the tech industry blog<a href=\"https:\/\/www.techdirt.com\/articles\/20200627\/23551144803\/as-predicted-parler-is-banning-users-it-doesnt-like.shtml\"> TechDirt<\/a>, and, of course, The Dispatch\u2019s<a href=\"https:\/\/share.par.pw\/post\/6d79998a2134487ebe7925877128dcc6\"> David French<\/a> began pointing out that Parler\u2014which markets itself as a \u201cFirst Amendment platform\u201d and says \u201cif you can say it on the streets of New York, you can say it on our platform\u201d\u2014were banning users for pornographic content, posting pictures of fecal matter, and other smutty content.<\/p>\n<p>Haha! This crowd exclaimed. It\u2019s not a \u201cfree speech\u201d platform! They\u2019re banning people! See?<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/M_feeney\/status\/1277963647810015242?s=20\"> Content moderation is hard<\/a>, isn\u2019t it?\u00a0 (The unstated corollary being Twitter, the sainted platform, is thus entirely justified in its moderation practices.)<\/p>\n<p>As Aaron Ross Powell of the Cato Institute<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ARossP\/status\/1278121458389200896?s=20\"> hopefully put it<\/a>, \u201cParler will be a ghost town in six months and everyone who ran to it as a safe space for conservatives will be back on Twitter pretending the whole episode never happened.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>In some ways, Powell got what he wanted, although not because Parler failed. Parler continued to grow in sustained popularity until, in January 2021, it was collectively kneecapped by Apple, Google, and Amazon Web Service under the pretext that it didn\u2019t do enough to moderate content on its platform in the wake of the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The rationale was an obvious sham. In charging documents for those arrested in relation to the fracas, the Department of Justice cited posts from Facebook, Instagram (owned by Facebook), and YouTube at nearly ten times the rate it cited posts on Parler. Yet those apps remained unmolested in Apple and Google\u2019s stores. (Jack Dorsey, then CEO of Twitter, Parler\u2019s direct competitor, <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/jack\/status\/1348139031599595522?s=20&#038;t=fOQIVkzdpgbhOeoZD-1AUQ\">tweeted out<\/a> a heart emoji of thanks when Parler no longer showed up on Apple\u2019s list of popular apps.)<\/p>\n<p>Parler was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2021\/4\/19\/22391943\/apple-parler-app-store-lawmakers-hearing-google-play\">eventually let back into<\/a> Apple\u2019s store after Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, and Rep. Ken Buck, R-Colo., sent a letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook grilling him about the unfair treatment \u2013 and after Parler agreed to make changes to its moderation terms. In the meantime, Parler remains banned by Google\u2019s Play store. The app has only regained <a href=\"https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/roberthart\/2021\/06\/02\/parlers-popularity-plummets-as-data-reveals-little-appetite-for-returning-free-speech-app-favored-by-conservatives\/?sh=3ec13b175e13\">4 percent<\/a> of its user base.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Deplatforming works. It\u2019s why the big guys do it.<\/p>\n<p>So what does all this mean for Truth Social and the social media app environment writ large? Broadly, it reveals  Truth Social isn\u2019t simply competing on its merits \u2013 it\u2019s up against app market gatekeepers and the terms they impose on entrants to their stores.<\/p>\n<p>What made the de-platforming of Parler so successful was less its removal from hosting by Amazon Web Services than the blackout by Apple and Google, whose app stores represent critical entry points to the mainstream app marketplace. If you\u2019re a social media app and you\u2019re not in these stores, you basically don\u2019t exist. (This is especially true of Apple, which does not allow users to sideload apps onto their phone \u2013 that is, directly download apps onto the phone outside of their store.)\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Smartphones account for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.statista.com\/statistics\/683082\/share-of-website-traffic-coming-from-mobile-devices-usa\/\">nearly half<\/a> of the digital traffic in the United States, a market that is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.statista.com\/statistics\/1045192\/share-of-mobile-operating-systems-in-north-america-by-month\/\">almost completely dominated<\/a> by Apple and Google. According to at least one study, 88 percent of the time people spend on their phones will be spent in apps, not browsers.<\/p>\n<p>In other words, if you\u2019re a social media company, you live and die by the app. And the only way you can reach users is through the app stores of Apple and Google. Without that access, small businesses cannot survive. This gives Apple and Google tremendous power to set the terms of the small businesses that are effectively forced to use their stores to access the marketplace.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"truth-social-versus-the-gatekeepers\"><strong>Truth Social Versus The Gatekeepers<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>This is an insight that Patrick Hedger, the executive director of Taxpayers Protection Alliance, appeared to stumble into unwittingly. TPA is a pro-small government, right-leaning group that promotes a hands-off approach to tech policy.<\/p>\n<p>Naturally, a hands-off approach to tech policy also involves rushing to critique anyone\u2019s attempt to make the market work for them. \u201cI downloaded Truth Social just to get a look at the terms of service,\u201d Hedger <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/PatHedger18\/status\/1495758680582676486?s=20&#038;t=Fm4AqAH__y3_BWQTBJprGw\">tweeted<\/a>. \u201cIn a shock to no one, it contains a lot of weirdness. Here are most of the banned things, most of which are constitutionally-protected. Also, a typo in the first one.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Hedger was attempting to critique the platform for hypocrisy \u2013 a platform holding itself out as a free speech beacon will ban things! But he inadvertently demonstrated the power of Apple\u2019s gatekeeping approach. Truth Social\u2019s terms for content moderation are essentially a copy and paste of Apple\u2019s terms for user-generated content on apps hosted in its store.<\/p>\n<p>Apple <a href=\"https:\/\/developer.apple.com\/app-store\/review\/guidelines\/#user-generated-content\">requires<\/a> apps hosted on its site to have \u201ca method for filtering objectionable material from being posted to the app,\u201d which includes \u201cpornographic content . . . making physical threats, or bullying.\u201d (Truth Social\u2019s requirement that posts not be \u201cfalse, inaccurate, or misleading\u201d appears to be outside of Apple\u2019s requirements.)\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The terms Hedger is attempting to drag, in other words, represent the cost of doing business with Apple. Or put another way, because Apple is so dominant, imposing these terms on their users is the toll Truth Social must pay to access the marketplace in the first place. It\u2019s a variation of the same fare Apple extracted from Parler to let it back into its store.<\/p>\n<p>All of this raises the question: with Google and Apple so dominant, is a censorship-free app even possible? In other words, is it even possible for any small social media business to attempt a novel approach to content moderation outside of what Apple and Google think about it?\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>At the moment, with Apple and Google controlling access to the market, it would seem that, no, truly inventive content moderation (or even First Amendment style content moderation) is not possible. Small businesses can be as inventive as they want \u2013 up to a point, and then their survival is determined only by their adherence to what the two market gatekeepers say. <\/p>\n<p>So much for permissionless innovation. There is no \u201cfree market\u201d for content moderation. And it would seem that reality should preoccupy those preoccupied with assuring the rest of us that the app market is still a haven for creativity, and one which respects all entrants on their unique merits.\u00a0<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"apple-s-winners-and-losers\"><strong>Apple\u2019s Winners And Losers<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>In the end, however, much of this comes down to the subjectivity with which Apple enforces its own terms. The bigger platforms are always given more latitude because of their <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/neil_chilson\/status\/1349398067221573634?s=20&#038;t=2XVGmSypZC1JFSCx-tvugg\">better \u201csystems\u201d<\/a> for content moderation \u2013 not their success at it. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cHaving the right systems\u201d is how Apple and Google could justify Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram remaining in their stores despite the role their sites played in January 6 content, while nuking Parler for the same sin. It\u2019s also why Twitter can let content that would seem to be in clear violation of Apple\u2019s terms run wild, while Truth Social will likely be slapped down if it allows the same.<\/p>\n<p>The reality of the app market is that success, for small social media companies, hinges on winning political favor with the gatekeepers. It\u2019s tied to how well the app conforms to the speech standards that Apple and Google set. It remains to be seen if or for how long Truth Social can remain in the favored category, or if some clearly pretextual enforcement decision arbitrarily removes them from mainstream access.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Either way, the pro-free market groups on the right will be there to justify Truth Social\u2019s demise just as they sniffed condescendingly at its entry. \u201cBuild your own,\u201d they say. \u201cShoulder the risks and put yourself out there. Be the man in the arena. We\u2019ll be here to throw rocks at you when you do.\u201d<\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\" \/>\n<p>\n  Rachel Bovard is The Federalist&#8217;s senior tech columnist and the senior director of policy at the Conservative Partnership Institute.  She has more than a decade of policy experience in Washington and has served in both the House and Senate in various roles, including as a legislative director and policy director for the Senate Steering Committee under the successive chairmanships of Sen. Pat Toomey and Sen. Mike Lee. She also served as director of policy services for The Heritage Foundation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Former President Donald Trump\u2019s media group released its Truth Social app for download in Apple\u2019s App Store on Sunday night. By Monday, it quickly hit number one in the App &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1325698","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1325698","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1325698"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1325698\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1325698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1325698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1325698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}