As Expected, Trump's Social Network Is Rapidly Banning Users It Doesn't Like, Without Telling Them Why
from the you-don't-say dept
Earlier this week we took a look at Donald Trump and Devin Nunes' Truth Social's terms of service, noting that they -- despite claiming that Section 230 should be "repealed" -- had explicitly copied Section 230 into their terms of service. In the comments, one of our more reliably silly commenters, who inevitably insists that no website should ever moderate, and that "conservatives" are regularly removed for their political views on the major social networks (and refusing to provide any evidence to support his claims, because he cannot), insisted that Truth Social wouldn't ban people for political speech, only for "obscenity."
So, about that. As Mashable has detailed, multiple people are describing how they've been banned from Truth Social within just the first few days -- and not for obscenity. The funniest one is someone -- not the person who runs the @DevinCow account on Twitter -- tried to sign up for a @DevinCow account on Truth Social. As you probably know, Devin Nunes, as a congressman, sued the satirical cow account for being mean to him (the case is still, technically, ongoing). You may recall that the headline of my article about Devin Nunes quitting Congress to run Truth Social announced that he was leaving Congress to spend more time banning satirical cows from Truth Social.
And apparently that was accurate. Matt Ortega first tried to register the same @DevinCow on Truth Social, only to be told that the username was not even allowed (which suggests that Nunes or someone else there had already pre-banned the Cow). Ortega then tried other varieties of the name, getting through with @DevinNunesCow... briefly. Then it, too, was banned:
This is censorship. pic.twitter.com/Ih6odqlsJh
— Matt Ortega (@MattOrtega) February 22, 2022
Note that the ban email does not identify what rules were broken by the account (another point that Trumpists often point to in complaining about other websites' content moderation practices: that they don't provide a detailed accounting).
So, it certainly appears that it's not just "obscenity" that Nunes and Trump are banning. They seem to be banning accounts that might, possibly, make fun of them and their microscopically thin skins.
The Mashable article also notes that Truth Social has also banned a right wing anti-vaxxer, who you might expect to be more welcome on the site, but no such luck:
Radical anti-vax right-wing broadcaster Stew Peters complains that he's "being censored on Truth Social" simply for demanding that those responsible for the COVID-19 vaccine "be put on trial and executed." pic.twitter.com/Uf9WXA793A
— Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) February 22, 2022
And here's the thing: this is normal and to be expected, and I'm glad that Truth Social is doing the standard forms of content moderation that every website needs to do to be able to operate a functional service. It would just be nice if Nunes/Trump and their whiny sycophants stopped pretending that this website is somehow more about "free speech" than other social media sites. It's not. Indeed, so far, they seem more willing to quickly ban people simply because they don't like them, than for any more principled reason or policy.
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Filed Under: account bans, content moderation, devin nunes, devin's cow, donald trump
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Remember when Parler banned people, and didn't tell them why until there was a backlash, and then a bunch of trolls tried to claim Parler gave a reason and that why it was different? Be prepared. The bullshit is coming.
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I look forward to a stunning lack of self-awareness and/or honesty as excuses are made that the people being banned are facing that penalty because they broke the rules and they aren't being told because it's clearly obvious why they were shown the door.
Should be worth a good chuckle or two at the least.
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They aren't going to say anything requiring self awareness.
They will claim the Cows Herd threatened something & if you demand proof you are just part of the lame stream media attacking them.
Their base isn't big on facts or evidence.
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See, that is the problem. As long as people are looking forward to it, they have an audience. It's boring, boorish, dumb and stupid and the idiots just need to stop having everybody breathlessly hand them a megaphone for their stupidities by gleefully amplifying their crap.
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Poor wording on my part, I'm not wanting or eagerly waiting for that to happen but know that it will(and it did, like clockwork as I noted below) and as expected it was just as stupid as ever. If the Trump cult went silent overnight I'd be perfectly thrilled to have the world that little bit less stupid as nothing of value was lost.
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On the contrary, this is a fairly important exercise and not merely a sideshow, despite the obvious circus atmosphere.
There's 2 things at play here that are worth keeping an eye on. The first is that it's yet another example of a retort to all the complaints about "Big Tech" and social media in general. The right will whine endlessly about how they're being "censored" and that the "monopolies" be shut down.
But, each of these new services are illustrations of how that's not really true since competing services keep appearing, and illustrations of how on some level "censorship" is required for such a service to operate effectively. If even services like Gettr and Truth require heavy moderation despite being set up as "free speech" venues, then how can it be argued that Twitter is wrong to do the same? They will argue about that, of course, but if the next time the mainstream services have to appear before congress to account for their actions, it's good that claims about censorship and monopolistic activity can be countered with "our many competitors feel they are required to do the same level of moderation".
The other things is that whether the rest of us like it or not, Trump is still relevant. He's still the defacto head of the Republican party, he's still surrounded by worshippers, and he's still eligible to run again for office. Until those things change, it's good to keep an eye on his, and after his hilariously failed attempt at a service before (which turned out to be a blog, despite earlier promises of something else), what happens on this service is worth keeping an eye on.
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'Rule 0: You are free to say anything that praises Dear Leader'
Ah yes the most heinous of speech, far worse than obscenity or it's ilk, making fun of the platform owner with a parody account, it's removal is truly a demonstration of how dedicated Trump Social is to protecting free speech unlike the platforms they so decry and condemn.
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Moo-deration
Cows are notoriously hard to moderate. Comments are often cheesy. Holsteins are especially spotty.
Dairy say more?
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Just remember Kolby. They are allowed to do this BECAUSE of 230. Don't try to tap dance around that because it will make you look even more stupid then you already are.
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I cant wait till they get rid of 230 just to find out it was a really dumb idea.
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'Hah, we finally got rid of the dastardly 230, now we shall- what do you mean we're being sued for all the money and thrown off every platform we don't own?! That's not how it was supposed to work at all!'
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Technically, they're allowed to do this because of the first amendment.
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Nobody has said they're not allowed to do this.
It's in no way just a technicality.
People are just pointing out that TS is climbing the moderation learning curve pretty quickly.
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That wasn't the point. The point was that it's not because of section 230 that they can ban users, as the person I responded to stated.
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Section 230 was created because there was some doubt over this in the Prodigy case, it just clarified that the first amendment applied however successfully the platform chose to moderate.
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That is a valid point. Hopefully aside from that, what I had stated still holds water.
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Clearly
Imposter accounts are disallowed on the service. Perhaps the real guy would have a claim to the name, but not an impersonator.
This looks like a violation of section 10.7. I'm sure he can have his opinion on vaccines. He just can't issue death threats.
So far, these cases are based on objective rules violations, and not political disagreement. For now, Truth has a superior moderation format.
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Like clockwork
Even when I explicitly pointed the trap out you still marched right into it, that is just priceless but thanks for the laugh.
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Exactly. Objective rules violations appear to be protected moderation. Subjective banning based on political difference is not good faith moderation, and is unprotected. I'm glad you can see the difference, and that it's not based on "users it doesn't like".
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Moderation is community curation; if a community (or its “leader”) decides the community is better off without certain political opinions being expressed in its community, they’re allowed to say so and ban anyone who expresses that opinion. The law—as in, both the First Amendment and Section 230—protect that decision.
Also: Which “political differences” are you referring to here, Koby? Be specific.
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Can you define the difference between political speech and hate speech, or is hate speech a subset of political speech? Also, when does political speech become misinformation? Without clear and bright definitions decision about such speech is always going to be subjective,
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The terms of service say that you can't impersonate another user or person. Creating an account on TS based on a user on Twitter doesn't violate that.
"Looks" being the operative word. "These people should be executed" is no more a threat of death than "These people should be arrested" is a threat of incarceration.
The violations are not objective when no reason has been given, and you made up the violations to suit your argument.
They're literally doing the same thing other platforms are doing.
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As someone said a couple of weeks ago (paraphrased): It doesn't matter what is said or done for a "conservative", what matters is who the actor is. If the actor is "conservative" it's good, if the actor isn't "conservative" it's bad.
Koby's behavior is a prime example of this.
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There seem to be a decent amount of folks who would like to transition away from twitter, if an alternative could reach critical mass for its user base. It's difficult to reconcile why folks want to move out, with another platform if it's just doing the same thing.
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Yeah, no. There really aren't.
You see Koby, the vast majority of people who would flock to these sites are assholes no one else wants to interact with. And when you have a bunch of assholes in a room together, there's bound to be a caste system of alpha assholes, beta assholes - you get the idea.
This happened recently with Gab when it decided to partner up with Nick Fuentes (who ironically was banned from GETTR, which I'm sure you're aware is another bastion of freeze peach).
Many pointed out that Fuentes has recently made scathing statements about Gab users, including calling them “fucking ret_ded” and another comment stating: "Average IQ on Gab is like 50"
Sources: https://www.dailydot.com/debug/gab-sponsoring-white-nationalist-nick-fuentes-conference/
https://www .mediamatters.org/gab/growing-links-between-gab-ceo-andrew-torba-and-holocaust-denier-nick-fuentes
S o I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for Truth Social to become a viable alternative. Because as I said, the problem with all these sites has little to do with their functionality.
The users are a bunch of fucking assholes.
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As I noted in a different comment, this phenomenon has a name: the “Worst People” Problem.
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When the pitch for your platform, the starting point is essentially 'If you're too toxic for any of the other platforms to want around head on over to ours' it's hardly a wonder that the user base ends up reflecting that.
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"There seem to be a decent amount of folks who would like to transition away from twitter, if an alternative could reach critical mass for its user base"
Yes, and I'm all for them because they help prove the point that the rest of us have been making - that you should use alternatives instead of trying to destroy the platforms everyone else uses just because you're butthurt over your Klan buddies being told to leave.
But, nothing will reach "critical mass" until it attracts enough people to do so, and that usually has nothing to do with external forces.
"It's difficult to reconcile why folks want to move out, with another platform if it's just doing the same thing."
There's plenty of places such people congregate - Stormfront, Free Republic, the_donald, 4chan, 8kun, etc. They don't reach critical mass because most people don't want to hang out with such a crowd.
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For now, Truth has a superior moderation format.
You have a service that's run by a spineless shitbag who's spent countless amounts of other people's money to sue a fictitious cow, who reports to the loofa-faced orange shit-gibbon who's supposedly both a real tough guy and a perpetual victim.
Continue to not learn, dipshit.
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Bravely bold Sir koby
Rode forth from the Internet.
He was not afraid to die,
Oh brave Sir koby.
He was not at all afraid
To be killed in nasty ways.
Brave, brave, brave, brave Sir koby.
He was not in the least bit scared
To be mashed into a pulp.
Or to have his eyes gouged out,
And his elbows broken.
To have his kneecaps split
And his body burned away,
And his limbs all hacked and mangled
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"So far, these cases are based on objective rules violations, and not political disagreement"
...and if the rules state that you can be banned due to political disagreement it would still be fine. Very hypocritical, considering how the Trump cult whined about being banned elsewhere, but fine.
But, you still haven't provided examples of people who have actually been banned for such disagreement elsewhere. Weak attempts at spinning other rules violations as being political, but no real examples.
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I wouldn't call banning people who (might) make fun of or them something every website needs to do. In fact I would say the opposite is true. Retaliating against criticism, humorous or otherwise, is a major red flag.
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Given the general support on TD for the cow account mocking Nunes I strongly suspect that when it said that sites need to do that it was talking more about moderation in general rather than that specific type, as no moderation and you quickly have a useless cesspit of a site filled with spam and worse.
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Sweet Jebus
If you ban the libs who are you going to own? eyeroll
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You joke, but the “Worst People” Problem is ultimately why the growth of right-wing platforms like Gab and Parler end up stalling. It will be among the reasons Trump Social will eventually shut down.
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Has anyone attempted to register with the handle @DevineBovine yet?
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@bovineofdevine has a better chance of getting through the filters, a it does not start with devine.
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And the Rightsheep will believe it
They will say, "Fake news, we haven't banned anyone!!"
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Sigh...not being in the US and not using an iphone means I won't be able to test to see if "Truckfump" goes through if I signed up.
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nuf said
https://discord.com/channels/150115508157415435/308074496131072001/946568583109034014
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Actually, Stew Peters wasn't banned.
And Peters is doing a good job of fooling people into thinking he was banned.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/02/trumps-truth-social-rollout-has-been-as-glitchy- as-youd-expect/
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Continuing to prove that the right wing's issue with moderation isn't that it exists, it's that they've lost the ability to do it, both culturally and online. Look at Reddit, conservative leaning subs are the most heavily censored out there, not to remove hate, but to remove pushback about the hate, with bans issued pre-emptively in many cases, people banned for wrongthink elsewhere without making a single post.
I give Truth two years, tops, the moment whatever deal Trump struck with them to use the service expires, he will stop posting, sell his stock then trash everyone involved while trying and failing once more to sue his way back onto twitter.
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"Continuing to prove that the right wing's issue with moderation isn't that it exists, it's that they've lost the ability to do it, both culturally and online."
It's not that they can't do it, it's just that they've lost the need to try and sugar coat it. When people are "censored" elsewhere for things like homophobia, transphobia, racism and spreading false information, those things seem to have become so central to their identities that they take it as a personal attack. Meanwhile, they see no problem with doing the same for speech they disagree with, because they seem to consider anyone who thinks differently to them as an enemy rather than equals with differing opinions.
I suspect that Pravda - sorry, Truth - will follow the same trend as all them do - a brief spurt of interest, followed by diminishing audiences as the hate is allowed to thrive and dissenting voices tuned out. Until they're back into an echo chamber that nobody else would ever consider looking at, the audience as tired of hanging around with people like them as the rest of us are, and the people funding the grift take their money and run once it's clear they've emptied the well.
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Bigots truly believe the worst thing you can do to them is call them what they are.
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