Why Trump’s Truth Social May Not Survive The Hype

Today let’s talk about some of the less obvious ways conservative social networks continue to slip — and whether Truth Social, backed by President Trump, can manage to evade their fate.

First the news: Truth Social is live on the App Store and is ranked #1 on the most downloaded chart for iOS this week. Be here Bryan Pietsch and Jeff Stein in the Washington Post†

The app says it is “America’s ‘Big Tent’ social media platform that encourages open, free and honest global conversation without discriminating against political ideology.” It was released on the App Store over the weekend and was updated for “bug fixes” late Sunday. (True Social’s website says it will be appearing on the Google Play Store soon.) […]

Users who sign up with Truth Social are greeted by a signup email describing the platform’s customers as “Truth Sayers”. “Share your unique opinion by posting a Truth, Re-Truth, photo, news post or video link… Don’t be alarmed if they take your Truth viral!” there is a welcome message.

Truth Social also boasts one thing its rivals can’t: what appears to be at least one authentic message from Trump himself. That helped spark a wave of signups signaling at least a temporary curiosity about what Trump’s presence could mean for a social app in 2022.

In the short term, Truth Social does not pose much of a threat to its rivals as hardly anyone has been allowed to use the site. (I signed up after it went live for a few hours and is currently #192,640 on the waiting list.) CEO Devin Nunes told Fox News he plans to run the site fully operational by the end of March† But if it is delayed beyond that point, it would be not be first for the parent company.

What else is there to say about Truth Social? It is based on technology from Mastodon, the open-source social network. The parent company, Trump Technology & Media Group, hopes to go public this year through a lucrative SPAC† The terms of service document, such as the user interface, seem to have been largely copied and pasted from elsewhere† It prohibits “false, inaccurate or misleading content,” a policy whose successful enforcement would be a first in the history of the Internet.

Perhaps regular posts from Trump are enough to create a lasting social network. Perhaps his return to constant attacks on his enemies and attacks on democracy will create something lasting.

But another view is that we have seen Trump-like networks rise and fall twice before. Trump was never there, but many of his key allies were, and after splashy launches, both saw their growth slow significantly. And Truth Social may soon end up in the same ditch.

On Wednesday, I was in conversation with the CEOs of the immediate predecessors of Truth Social: George Farmer, which Parler took over last May and has sought to revive the company’s fortunes after the app was removed from the platform following the January 6 attack on the Capitol; and Jason Miller, former chief spokesperson for the 2016 Trump campaign, who is running the Gettr app now†

The occasion was Pivot MIA, the inaugural conference for Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway’s Pivot podcast† And the key question was whether apps like this one — run by Republicans, fixated on scary ideas of “free speech,” aimed at people who feel alienated by more mainstream social networks — have a real future.

(That’s regardless of whether I personally find these apps good or convincing. “Run by Republicans, fixated on a limited number of ideas, and pitched at people who feel alienated from the mainstream” — that’s not a bad way to describe Fox News, either. , what an economic miracle has been† If, like me, you believe that Fox News has been a malevolent force in American politics, then I think you’ll want to stay tuned for the rise of its potential successors.)

When I sat down with Farmer and Miller, I was hoping to get a sense of whether they’re seeing something I don’t in what often, on the surface, look like extremely simple Twitter clones. As I flipped through them again today, I noticed how many posts from top influencers on Parler and Gettr are just tweets copied and pasted.

I also wanted to know what they expected would happen if a new alternative network appeared that was endorsed by Trump himself. Parler and especially Gettr were built in anticipation for the former president to take refuge there after being suspended from Twitter, Facebook and YouTube in 2020; Didn’t it matter, I asked the CEOs, that Trump had chosen not to join them?

Farmer told me that Parler is evolving into a less traditional social network and would soon be launching an NFT marketplace, and you can probably imagine the expression on my face as I type that sentence. “I don’t think Truth Social is going to really compete in that space,” Farmer said of Parler’s NFT plans. We will see†

Miller, who worked closely with Trump and planned to meet with him later in the day we spoke, told me he was still optimistic about the prospect of a presidential Gettr account. “I’m going to the president this afternoon and make the field again, to say @realdonaldtrump, all reserved and ready for you,” Miller said Wednesday.

He added that the announcement of Truth Social had sparked a wave of signups for Gettr, and attributed the phenomenon to the growing disregard for deplatforming among mainstream networks. “I always say, to channel my inner George Bailey, that every time Twitter or Facebook kicks someone off their platform, another Gettr angel gets his wings,” he said.

Perhaps it says something about the still relatively rare practice of deplatforming, that Parler and Gettr have relatively few angels in their ranks. Parler, who came as close as one of these apps has to achieve breakthrough success, has had 11.3 million installations to date, according to Sensor Tower. Gettr, which launched last June, has 6.7 million. Daily users are presumably a small fraction of those numbers; many people took an early look but quickly turned around, including myself.

So why didn’t they stay? Apps like this have a handful of core issues.

First, they are marketed as social networks, but they work as broadcast networks. Join Parler or Gettr and you’ll be asked to follow a bunch of conservative commentators and publishers, who instantly dominate your timeline with the exact same stories you can find on Breitbart or any other Republican publication. There are few, if any, surfaces on which average users can get positive attention for these apps.

Few, if any, surfaces for average users to gain positive attention
In addition, Parler and Gettr have so far chosen not to create feeds ranked by engagement. That makes it even harder for average users to stand out when they make a clever observation — unless you’re constantly posting, like commentator Dinesh D’Souza, anything you say will quickly be drowned out by the flood of influencer content. (Much of it, including D’Souza, was just inserted from Twitter.)

This leads to the second problem with these apps: their market is smaller than they think. To hear Farmer and Miller say, the world is desperate for a less restrictive approach to content moderation. But TikTok, the most popular social network out there, is also probably the most restrictive — especially in terms of which posts can go viral† The world votes with its eyes, and the majority of people clearly prefer apps with robust moderation.

What makes the CEOs of alternative networks so sure that the world wants an alternative? Miller pointed to cases of suspension or removal of political leaders and their supporters in countries such as Brazil and the United Kingdom, as well as in countries such as Iran and Saudi Arabia where political expression is strongly suppressed.

“The issue of free speech is all over the world, not just here,” Miller told me. “But if you’re not discriminated against, you won’t see it. Because President Trump has kicked off and you applauded that – you like that. There were [74] million people who voted for him, who would say, that’s a shame, that’s terrible. So there are people all over the world who, I think, would have a strikingly different point of view.”

https://whatsnew2day.com/why-trumps-truth-social-may-not-survive-the-hype/