Becoming available for download Sunday night on Apple’s App Store, Truth Social has quickly climbed the charts, reaching No. 1 early Monday. Owned by the Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG), the company Trump made after leaving the presidency, Truth Social is a Twitter-like app that was created a year after Trump was banned from Twitter, Facebook, and other social media platforms for his incendiary language following the January 6th insurrection.
In Truth Social, instead of tweets, posts are called “truths” and reamplification of “truths” is known as “retruths.” Users of the app are also referred to as “truthsayers.”
After the launch, the app has run into many technical issues. Upon downloading the app, people were met with various error messages. As seen in the image above, those who got past the error messages were able to join a waitlist that has grown to over 160k. Despite these difficulties, according to The Insider, “TMTG CEO Devin Nunes told Fox News that he expects Truth Social to be fully operational by the end of March.”
Similar apps to Truth Social that are popular with conservatives include Rumble, Gettr, Parler. According to CNN, Parler “was removed last year from Apple and Google's app stores amid allegations that Jan. 6 rioters used the platform to incite violence.”
There was a version of the site that briefly became accessible to the public last October which allowed people to claim usernames and create accounts. According to the Washington Post, “one account under the handle “donaldjtrump” posted a photo of a pig defecating.”
Trump also launched a blog called “From the Desk of Donald Trump” which was reported to have very low viewership. It was shut down after 29 days because Trump was upset by media coverage concerning his blog’s tiny following.
Related to the civil liberties and civil rights that we went over in class, Trump and his conservative toolbox has frequently claimed that the Twitter ban is a violation of his First Amendment rights. However, one's First Amendment right still has limitations. The 1919 SCOTUS case Schenck v. United States concluded that the First Amendment does not protect speech that promotes violence or harm against others -- the "clear and present danger of a significant evil" test. The 1969 Brandenburg v. Ohio expanded on this test -- it concluded that speech "directed at inciting or producing imminent lawless action" and is "likely to incite or produce such action" is not protected under the First Amendment.
Furthermore, according to Newsweek, Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act "protects social media companies and other websites from liability for content their users post. Companies cannot be treated as publishers, only hosts who can act as moderators 'in good faith.' "
Nevertheless, the debate continues as to how much power social media companies should have in regulating user content on their platforms and whether Trump's ban was indeed a violation of his First Amendment rights in the context of how prevalent social media is today. Or, you could circumvent that debate entirely, hastily re-create the megaphone that Twitter ripped away from you, and reap the benefits of a loyal fan base -- willing to download your half-baked app, create hype, and boost your stock (generating millions of dollars for you!) but unwilling to read your half-baked blog posts.
Questions:
1. Does Trump’s ban from Twitter and other social media platforms constitute a violation of his First Amendment rights? Has social media become so ingrained in today's culture that being banned from social media is akin to censorship?
2. If Trump were to again use incendiary language similar to what he said on January 6th on his platform Truth Social, is there any basis on which he could be charged with a crime? (yelling “fire” in a theater)
3. What are the dangers of Trump creating his own conservative echo chamber, besides trying to motivate his followers to overthrow the government again?
4. What do you think about Twitter, Truth Social, and other similar apps?
Sources and image creds:
https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/21/tech/trump-truth-social-app-store/index.html
https://www.cnet.com/news/trumps-truth-social-debuts-in-apples-app-store/
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/trumps-social-media-app-launches-year-twitter-ban-83027675
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/02/21/truth-social-app-donald-trump/
2 comments:
While the issue might not be completely black and white, Trump is simply a user on a social media platform just like everyone else. He has to abide by the Terms and Conditions, and he can be banned just like any other user. In this case, I don't think he deserves special treatment just for being the President.
I am not totally sure about the legality of what would happen if Trump posted similar things on his new app, but only time will tell. However, I think that now that we have seen the consequences of the this language (Jan 6th), people will be more cautious and responsive if he attempts to repeat this behavior. A space completely dominated by those who align themselves with Trump is certain to become an echo-chamber even worse that seen on larger social media platforms like Twitter.
Social media companies are private companies that have the right to monitor what content is on their apps. Just like explicit content and bullying are restricted on such apps, they have the right to limit and ban what users they want to. An argument, not a very good one though, that could be made is that such social media companies are so vital to speech and life that removing users would be violating their first amendment. Besides that there really isn’t any checks yet on what private social media companies can do to their platforms. Stepping away from Trump, the idea of checks on social media companies brings up larger issues over the great amount of influence such platforms have on people, yet the lack of checks. Most recently we saw this with the internal facebook study that was leaked showing their algorithms target younger, especially girls, and make mental health problems worse.
In terms of if Trump posts similar things to what was said before January 6th, I don’t think he would be charged. The limitations to the first amendment are very hard to prove. Essentially he would have to say: “Everyone go raid the capitol, the guards won’t be working at 6.” Even then there are many checks that have to be made before he could be charged for such speech. His speech has previously been very vague and thus hard to charge.
Post a Comment