Even As Trump Relies On Section 230 For Truth Social, He's Claiming In Lawsuits That It's Unconstitutional

from the say-what-now? dept

With the launch of Donald Trump's ridiculous Truth Social offering, we've already noted that he's so heavily relying on Section 230's protections to moderate that he's written Section 230 directly into his terms of service. However, at the same time, Trump is still fighting his monstrously stupid lawsuits against Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube for banning him in the wake of January 6th.

Not surprisingly (after getting the cases transferred to California), the internet companies are pointing the courts to Section 230 as to why the cases should be dismissed. And, also not surprisingly (but somewhat hilariously), Trump is making galaxy brain stupid claims in response. That's the filing in the case against YouTube which somehow has eight different lawyers signed onto a brief so bad that all eight of those lawyers should be laughed out of court.

The argument as to why Section 230 doesn't apply is broken down into three sections, each dumber than the others. First up, it claims that "Section 230 Does Not Immunize Unfair Discrimination," which claims (falsely) that YouTube is a "common carrier" (it is not, has never been, and does not resemble one in any manner). The argument is not even particularly well argued here. It's three ridiculous paragraphs, starting with Packingham (which is not relevant to a private company choosing to moderate), then claiming (without any support, since there is none) that YouTube is a common carrier, and then saying that YouTube's terms of service mean that it "must carry content, irrespective of any desire or external compulsion to discriminate against Plaintiff."

Literally all of that is wrong. It took EIGHT lawyers to be this wrong.

The second section claims -- incorrectly -- that Section 230 "does not apply to political speech." They do this by totally misrepresenting the "findings" part of Section 230 and then ignoring basically all the case law that says, of course Section 230 applies to political speech. As for the findings, while they do say that Congress wants "interactive computers services" to create "a true diversity of political discourse" as the authors of the bill themselves have explained, this has always been about allowing every individual website to moderate as they see fit. It was never designed so that every website must carry all speech, but rather by allowing websites to curate the community and content they want, there will be many different places for different kinds of speech.

Again. Eight lawyers to be totally and completely wrong.

Finally, they argue that "Section 230(c) Violates the First Amendment as Applied to This Matter." It does not. Indeed, should Trump win this lawsuit (he won't) that would violate the 1st Amendment in compelling speech on someone else's private property who does not wish to be associated with it. And this section goes off the rails completely:

The U.S. contends that Section 230(c) does not implicate the First Amendment because “it “does not regulate Plaintiff’s speech,” but only “establishes a content- and viewpoint-neutral rule prohibiting liability” for certain companies that ban others’ speech. (U.S. Mot. at 2). Defendants’ egregious conduct in restraining Plaintiff’s political speech belies its claims of a neutral standard.

I mean, the mental gymnastics necessary to make this claim are pretty impressive, so I'll give them that. But this is mixing apples and orangutans in making an argument that, even if it did make sense, still doesn't make any sense. Section 230 does not regulate speech. That's why it's content neutral. The fact that the defendant, YouTube, does moderate its content -- egregiously or not -- is totally unrelated to the question of whether or not Section 230 is content neutral. Indeed, YouTube's ability to kick Trump off its platform is itself protected by the 1st Amendment.

The lawyers seem to be shifting back and forth between the government "The U.S." and the private entity, YouTube, here, to make an argument that might make sense if it were only talking about one entity, but doesn't make any sense at all when you switch back and forth between the two.

Honestly, this filing should become a case study in law schools about how not to law.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, content moderation, donald trump, section 230
Companies: facebook, truth social, twitter, youtube

Trump's Truth Social Bakes Section 230 Directly Into Its Terms, So Apparently Trump Now Likes Section 230

from the well-how-about-that dept

When Donald Trump first announced his plans to launch his own Twitter competitor, Truth Social, we noted that the terms of service on the site indicated that the company -- contrary to all the nonsense claims of being more "free speech" supportive than existing social media sites -- was likely going to be quite aggressive in banning users who said anything that Trump disliked. Last month, Devin Nunes, who quit Congress to become CEO of the fledgling site, made it clear that the site would be heavily, heavily moderated, including using Hive, a popular tool for social media companies that want to moderate.

So with the early iOS version of the app "launching" this past weekend, most people were focused on the long list of things that went wrong with the launch, mainly security flaws and broken sign-ups. There's also been some talk about how the logo may be a copy... and the fact that Trump's own wife declared that she'll be using Parler for her social media efforts.

But, for me, I went straight to checking out the terms of service for the site. They've been updated since the last time, but the basics remain crystal clear: despite all the silly yammering from Nunes and Trump about how they're the "free speech" supporting social network, Truth Social's terms are way more restrictive regarding content than just about any I've ever seen before.

Still, the most incredible part is not only that Truth Social is embracing Section 230, but it has literally embedded parts of 230 into its terms of service. The terms require people who sign up to "represent and warrant" that their content doesn't do certain things. And the site warns that if you violate any of these terms it "may result in, among other things, termination or suspension of your rights to use the Service and removal or deletion of your Contributions." I don't know, but I recall a former President and a former cow farming Representative from California previously referring to that kind of termination as "censorship." But, one of the things that users must "represent and warrant" is the following:

your Contributions are not obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, violent, harassing, libelous, slanderous, or otherwise objectionable.

That might sound familiar to those of you who are knowledgeable about Section 230 -- because it's literally cribbed directly from Section 230(c)(2), which says:

No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable...

That's almost word for word the same as 230. The only changes are that it removes "excessively" from "violent" and adds in "libelous" and "slanderous," -- subjects in which Devin Nunes considers himself something of an expert, though courts don't seem to agree.

Hell, they even leave in the catch-all "otherwise objectionable," even as some of their Republican friends in Congress have tried to remove that phrase in a few of their dozens of "Section 230 reform" bills.

So it's not at all surprising, but potentially a bit ironic that the man who demanded the outright repeal of Section 230 (even to the point of trying to stop funding the US military if Congress didn't repeal the law) has now not only embraced Section 230, but has literally baked a component of it (the part that he and his ignorant fans have never actually understood) directly into his own service's terms.

It's so blatant I almost wonder if it was done just for the trolling. That said, I still look forward to Truth Social using Section 230 to defend itself against inevitable lawsuits.

There are some other fun tidbits in the terms of service that suggest the site will be one of the most aggressive in moderating content. It literally claims that it may take down content that is "false, inaccurate, or misleading" (based on Truth Social's own subjective interpretation, of course). You can't advertise anything on the site without having it "authorized." You need to "have the written consent, release, and/or permission of each and every identifiable individual person in your Contributions." Does Truth Social think you actually need written permission to talk about someone?

There's also a long, long list of "prohibited" activities, including compiling a database of Truth Social data without permission, any advertising (wait, what?), bots, impersonation, "sexual content or language," or "any content that portrays or suggest explicit sexual acts." I'm not sure how Former President "Grab 'em by the p***y" will survive on his own site. Oh right, also "sugar babies" and "sexual fetishes" are banned.

Lots of fun stuff that indicates that like 4chan, then 8chan, then Gab, then Parler, then Gettr that have at times declared themselves to be "free speech zones," every website knows that it needs to moderate to some level, and also that it's Section 230 that helps keep them out of court when they moderate in ways that piss off some of their users.

Filed Under: content moderation, devin nunes, donald trump, section 230, terms of service
Companies: tmtg, truth social

Devin Nunes, CEO Of Trump's TRUTH Social, Confirms That 'Free Speech' Social Media Will Be HEAVILY Moderated

from the thank-you-section-230 dept

It's never been a secret that for all of the public claims about how Donald Trump's upcoming social network "TRUTH Social" will be for "free speech" that this was never actually the plan. We noted right up front that its terms of service appeared to be way more restrictive than all the competitors it was criticizing -- and even said it would be a violation of terms to "annoy" anyone working for the site. When Rep. Devin Nunes -- who has a long history of suing people for criticizing and mocking him (i.e., no friend of free speech) -- announced he was retiring from Congress to become CEO of Trump's social network, we noted that he'd be quick to ban people on the site.

And, so it's no surprise that Fox Business is reporting that the site will have "strict" content moderation tools in place, in order to make the site "family friendly."

Fox Business has learned that TMTG is partnering with Hive—a San Francisco-based Series D start-up that provides automated solutions through cloud-based artificial intelligence for understanding images, videos, and text content. Hive’s technology provides automated content moderation across video, image, text and audio.

"We want to be very family-friendly, we want this to be a very safe place, and we are focused on making sure any illegal content is not on the site," Nunes said in an exclusive interview with Fox Business.

"Hive has a great track record in this, and they have been good to work with," Nunes continued. "They are very helpful for our team and because of their experience, I think they’re helping to craft the right spot for us."

He added: "We want to be the most family-friendly site."

Hive is, indeed, pretty widely used by various social media platforms struggling to keep craziness in check -- including Parler and Chatroulette.

But, it's pretty incredible to see Nunes saying this without any self-awareness at all. Considering how much he has criticized Twitter, YouTube and other platforms for their moderation practices -- which were also very much based on the belief of making their platforms "family friendly" for users -- it's pretty ridiculous to pretend that TRUTH Social is somehow different.

Also, the reason that TRUTH Social can work with Hive and make these decisions about how to moderate their platform in a "family friendly" manner is because of Section 230 giving them the freedom to do so without liability -- the very law that Trump himself wanted repealed.

Of course, the real irony is that along with that article on Fox Business is a video clip of Maria Bartiromo, whining to GETTR CEO Jason Miller, about how terrible existing social media companies are because they "censor" content, and talking about how great it is that TRUTH Social will be different. She quotes Trump talking about this "new age of censorship." There seems to be no recognition at all that TRUTH Social will moderate just like every other site does -- and, in fact, this video is over an article saying exactly that. Even more ridiculous: the example that Baritromo uses of "censorship" from the big existing platforms... was not censorship at all. She posted a photo of a sunrise to Instagram, and listed upcoming guests as well as "topics" that they would be talking about, including "vaccines."

It appears this triggered an automated context system on Instagram that when someone tried to share the image, Instagram popped up a note that said "Make sure the information is reliable before sharing" and added a link to a CDC website with information about vaccines. That is not even remotely "censorship." Indeed, it's exactly the opposite. It is the quintessential "more information" -- the very thing that Baritromo, quoting Trump, seemed to suggest we need more of. But because it's about her photo, she claims its "censorship."

Perhaps just as laughable, in that interview, Miller claims "fact is, we're living in the worst period of political censorship in American history." That's absolute hogwash. The opposite is objectively true. Until recently the vast majority of Americans had nowhere to speak publicly about politics. Now they all have places they can speak. It's just that not everyone gets to speak on everyone else's property.

The whole thing is crazy, and it would be nice if Baritromo, Trump, Miller, and Nunes just out and out admitted the reality: they just don't like it when their own nonsense is moderated, and they want separate rules for themselves than for anyone else.

Filed Under: ai, content moderation, devin nunes, donald trump, family friendly, free speech, maria bartiromo, section 230
Companies: fox news, gettr, hive, instagram, tmtg, truth social, twitter

Devin Nunes Retires From Congress To Spend More Time Banning Satirical Cows From Trump's New Social Network

from the we-have-to-do-content-moderation? dept

In a bit of a Monday afternoon surprise, Rep. Devin Nunes has announced that he's retiring from Congress this month to become the CEO of Trump's new media company, Trump Media & Technology Group -- a company which apparently now has tons of money in the bank (even if from sketchy sources) but also is facing a newly revealed SEC investigation that might require someone who actually understands this stuff, rather than a very thin-skinned politician who sues people who criticize him.

Note to Devin: you can't sue the SEC for defamation.

There's all sorts of speculation about why Nunes would do this now. He's actually a pretty powerful Congressional representative, and in line to be in charge of some very powerful committees if, as is widely expected, the Republicans retake control over the House next year. But, he might also see the writing on the wall. Earlier in his career he was winning elections by a pretty wide margin, but the last two elections have actually been pretty tight. And, with California going through its redistricting process, he may have realized there was a high likelihood he'd lose next time around. Also, we know that watchdog groups have asked for an investigation into some of Nunes' activities.

And, then, of course, there are all the many, many frivolous lawsuits he's filed over the last few years, with the first one remaining the most notable and the most ridiculous: suing a satirical cow that made fun of Devin Nunes online. The fact that he'd sue a satirist for making fun of him does not suggest someone who believes very strongly in free speech.

So it should be extra interesting to see just how Devin Nunes handles content moderation questions for Truth Social now that he's in charge. Will he allow @DevinCow to have an account there? Or will he prove himself to be a hypocrite -- complaining about "censorship" on other sites, but actively engaging in the same (or more selective and biased) moderation on his own site? The press release from TMTG with quotes from Nunes reads as quite laughable when you realize he's suing satirical accounts on Twitter that made fun of him:

Congressman Devin Nunes added, “The time has come to reopen the Internet and allow for the free flow of ideas and expression without censorship. The United States of America made the dream of the Internet a reality and it will be an American company that restores the dream. I’m humbled and honored President Trump has asked me to lead the mission and the world class team that will deliver on this promise.”

For someone who is literally suing a bunch of reporters and critics, the claim of allowing for "the free flow of ideas and expression without censorship" doesn't just ring hollow, it rings of being a total hypocrite.

Either way, as we've seen with every wannabe Trumpist social media site promising to "bring back" free speech, it doesn't take long for them to realize that content moderation is not about "censorship," it is simply necessary to run a modern website.

How long will it take Nunes to recognize this simple fact? And will it happen before or after Trump fires him and stabs him in the back?

Filed Under: 1st amendment, congress, content moderation, defamation, devin nunes, donald trump, free speech, nune's cow, retirement, social media
Companies: tmtg, truth social

Because Of Course: Trump's SPAC Deal May Have Broken The Law

from the on-brand dept

If you thought that Trump's new Truth Social website's potential legal problems with its apparent failure to abide by the license on the open source code it seems to be using would be the worst legal problems facing the site, well, you underestimated The Donald. There's been plenty of talk about the SPAC deal that valued the company at billions of dollars through one of those reverse merger IPOs. But, now the NY Times is reporting that the way the deal was done may have violated securities laws. So on brand.

To get his deal done, Mr. Trump ventured into an unregulated and sometimes shadowy corner of Wall Street, working with an unlikely cast of characters: the former “Apprentice” contestants, a small Chinese investment firm and a little-known Miami banker named Patrick Orlando.

Mr. Orlando had been discussing a deal with Mr. Trump since at least March, according to people familiar with the talks and a confidential investor presentation reviewed by The New York Times. That was well before his SPAC, Digital World Acquisition, made its debut on the Nasdaq stock exchange last month. In doing so, Mr. Orlando’s SPAC may have skirted securities laws and stock exchange rules, lawyers said.

SPACs sell their shares to investors through an initial public offering and then find a private company with which to merge. Because SPACs are empty vessels, stock exchanges allow them to list their shares without disclosing much financial information. But that creates opportunities for SPACs to serve as backdoor vehicles for companies to go public without receiving the kind of investor scrutiny they would in a traditional listing. To prevent that, SPACs aren’t supposed to have a merger planned at the time of their I.P.O.

Ooops.

And it gets worse:

Another issue is that Digital World’s securities filings repeatedly stated that the company and its executives had not engaged in any “substantive discussions, directly or indirectly,” with a target company — even though Mr. Orlando had been in discussions with Mr. Trump.

Given the politically fraught nature of a deal with Mr. Trump, securities lawyers said that Digital World’s lack of disclosure about those conversations could be considered an omission of “material information.”

You don't say.

Of course, given all this, how much do you want to bet that it would be Orlando on the hook for this, rather than Trump? Either way, the NY Times has more details suggesting that, despite Digital World insisting that it didn't have any acquisition deals in place, everyone in Trump world was blabbering on about the SPAC deal they had set to go.

In early July, Phillip Juhan, a former financial analyst who had also been an executive at a bankrupt fitness company, was introducing himself to people as Trump Media’s chief financial officer. He said the company was in an “exclusive agreement” with a SPAC, according to one of the people.

So now the question is, which is going to be more of a problem for Trump's new operation? The Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) or the SEC?

Filed Under: donald trump, patrick orlando, sec, spac
Companies: digital world acquisition, tmtg, truth social

Trump's Broken Social Media Venture Is Valued At Billions Of Dollars And Its Breaking Experts' Brains

from the the-nftification-of-stocks dept

Last week we wrote a bit about Trump's new planned social media website, Truth Social (which forbids too many capital letters, so I will oblige by not capitalizing the entire "Truth" part of the name, as Trump's branding apparently prefers). We mostly focused on the ridiculous terms of service (forbidding capital letters among other things), and the fact that it was already kicking people off the system (who only got on the system because Trump's coders apparently failed to properly secure the site pre-launch). We also talked briefly about how it appeared to be a reskin of Mastodon, and that's potentially an interesting legal issue, because it certainly appears to be violating the AGPLv3 license for Mastodon.

But, perhaps a more interesting story right now... is how the grift behind all of this is combining the whole Gamestonk craze and the NFT craze... and the SPAC craze to make absolutely no sense at all.

We had mentioned in passing in the original post that Trump's new company -- Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG) -- was formed via a reverse merger using a SPAC. Such deals have become a popular sort of backdoor way to take a private company public, though, they're usually combined with some additional private investment (known as a PIPE -- a Private Investment in Public Equity) in order to afford the "takeover" of the private company that is becoming public. SPACs aren't new -- hell we wrote about Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak creating a SPAC back in 2006. But in the last few years, they've been all the rage.

But, Trump's SPAC deal is raising some eyebrows -- or frying some brains. My favorite analysis is the one done by the always excellent Matt Levine at Bloomberg where you can basically hear him tearing his hair out at the absurdity of it all and gradually watch as he comes to terms with the fact that nothing at all matters and it's all nonsense. As Levine notes, the real grift here is that it doesn't matter one bit if Trump has a good business plan for Truth Social or TMTG, because he's going to walk away with tons of cash just from the stock deal.

The point is that if you launch a company with the goal of making it profitable, you have to, like, have a workable business plan and execute on it and deal with a million different operational complexities. If you launch a company with the goal of selling a lot of stock, you have to get people to trust you and give you their money. There is some overlap between those things! But they are different things!

As Levine explains, this whole thing, is kinda like an NFT of Trump. It's a way for Trump fans to throw money at Trump to be part of the Trump brand.

But I think that a more realistic valuation method here is not to worry about cash flows at all — as Trump SPAC clearly does not — and treat the stock simply as a token of public interest in Donald Trump. My guess is that the price of Trump SPAC stock will not, for instance, be much affected by its earnings announcements, unless Trump himself does the earnings calls in which case it will go up no matter what he says. My guess is that the stock will not be particularly correlated with the stocks of other media or technology companies. My guess is that the stock will go up when Trump is on television, or if he announces that he’s running for president again. My guess is that if something bad happens to Trump — if he’s sued or arrested or banned by a new tech company or some new scandal comes out — then that will also make the stock go up, to own the libs or whatever. My guess is that each day that goes by without Trump news, the stock will go down a bit. My guess is that the stock is essentially a bet on Trump’s personal newsiness, on Trump-news volatility.

To be clear I have absolutely no corporate finance basis for these guesses; I don’t think that, like, getting sued for attacking protesters will be good for Trump Thing’s ad revenue or whatever. I don’t have some story of “public interest in Trump increases the expected value of Trump Thing's cash flows so the stock will go up.” I just think that the stock price will have nothing to do with the ad revenue; it will be based entirely on how much attention Trump’s fans are paying to Trump.

And, of course, since Levine wrote that, we've already seen more evidence that this was true. Indeed, as Levine mentioned in his piece, it wouldn't necessarily just be Trumpists buying into DWAC, the stock for the new TMTG, it would also be those assuming that Trumpists would drive the stock up. It didn't take long for WallStreetBets, the Reddit community responsible for the original GameStonks situation to go all in on the stock.

Alex Wilhelm at TechCrunch sums it all up best:

None of this makes sense. Even by the standards of 2021 and the SPAC era, this is all very stupid.

Even Matt Levine seems to be about ready to give everything up:

Doesn’t it feel like there has been a paradigm shift, a regime change? Doesn’t it feel like for the last 80 or so years there has been a dominant view of investing, a first-page-of-the-textbook given, that investments are worth the present value of their expected future cash flows? Doesn’t it feel like that world has ended and a new one has begun? I should go buy some Dogecoin.

It is a silly feeding frenzy, and someone will get left holding the bag. It's unlikely to be Donald Trump, of course. It doesn't appear he's put any of his own money behind any of this. No one really believes that Truth Social or TMTG is a "unicorn" worth billions of dollars. But there's a lot of people chasing the greater fool right now, and it's kind of amusing to watch from the sidelines -- though it won't be surprising when the whole thing comes crashing down.

Filed Under: donald trump, fundamentals, grift, nfts, reverse merger, social media, spac, stock
Companies: dwac, tmtg, truth social

Trump Given 30 Days To Have His Social Media Site Comply With Open Source License

from the tick-tock dept

Plenty of people have raised concerns that Donald Trump's sketchy new social media site, Truth Social, is just a lightly reskinned Mastodon, which is violating Mastodon's fairly strict AGPLv3 license. As we had previously discussed, the aggressive (and sloppy) terms of service for the site claim that the code is proprietary, and even claims that "all source code, databases, functionality, software, website designs, audio, video, text, photographs, and graphics on the Site (collectively, the “Content”) and the trademarks, service marks, and logos contained therein (the “Marks”) are owned or controlled by us or licensed to us..."

Of course, part of the reason that Mastodon uses such a license is to encourage others to take the code and build on it if they abide by the terms of the license. And the nature of Mastodon's license is that if you use it, you must make the complete source code available of what you build with it. The key bit of the license:

You may convey a work based on the Program, or the modifications to produce it from the Program, in the form of source code under the terms of section 4, provided that you also meet all of these conditions:

a) The work must carry prominent notices stating that you modified it, and giving a relevant date.

b) The work must carry prominent notices stating that it is released under this License and any conditions added under section 7. This requirement modifies the requirement in section 4 to "keep intact all notices".

c) You must license the entire work, as a whole, under this License to anyone who comes into possession of a copy. This License will therefore apply, along with any applicable section 7 additional terms, to the whole of the work, and all its parts, regardless of how they are packaged. This License gives no permission to license the work in any other way, but it does not invalidate such permission if you have separately received it.

d) If the work has interactive user interfaces, each must display Appropriate Legal Notices; however, if the Program has interactive interfaces that do not display Appropriate Legal Notices, your work need not make them do so.

It's not clear that any of these conditions have been met. So, now the Software Freedom Conservancy has given Trump 30 days to bring the code into compliance -- specifically by providing the source code to Truth Social to the early users who were able to sign up -- or, under the license terms, Trump's "rights in the software are permanently terminated."

Early evidence strongly supports that Trump's Group publicly launched a so-called “test site” of their “Truth Social” product, based on the AGPLv3'd Mastodon software platform. Many users were able to create accounts and use it — briefly. However, when you put any site on the Internet licensed under AGPLv3, the AGPLv3 requires that you provide (to every user) an opportunity to receive the entire Corresponding Source for the website based on that code. These early users did not receive that source code, and Trump's Group is currently ignoring their very public requests for it. To comply with this important FOSS license, Trump's Group needs to immediately make that Corresponding Source available to all who used the site today while it was live. If they fail to do this within 30 days, their rights and permissions in the software are automatically and permanently terminated. That's how AGPLv3's cure provision works — no exceptions — even if you're a real estate mogul, reality television star, or even a former POTUS.

I and my colleagues at Software Freedom Conservancy are experts at investigating non-compliance with copyleft license and enforcing those licenses once we confirm the violations. We will be following this issue very closely and insisting that Trump's Group give the Corresponding Source to all who use the site.

I think that's called being put on notice. It will be interesting to see how Trump responds -- and what happens next.

Filed Under: agpl, copyright, donald trump, licenses, open source, source code
Companies: mastodon, software freedom conservancy, truth social

Trump Announces His Own Social Network, 'Truth Social,' Which Says It Can Kick Off Users For Any Reason (And Already Is)

from the because-of-course dept

Last night, Donald Trump sent out a press release announcing (effectively) the launch of his new social network, "Truth Social." The press release shows that it's a bit more complicated than that. Trump is launching "Trump Media & Technology Group" which is entering into a reverse merger agreement to become listed as a public company in order to launch this new service. Apparently, Truth Social will let in "invited guests" next month, followed by a full launch in early 2022. The press release has the expected bombastically ridiculous quote from the former President.

"I created TRUTH Social and TMTG to stand up to the tyranny of Big Tech. We live in a world where the Taliban has a huge presence on Twitter, yet your favorite American President has been silenced. This is unacceptable. I am excited to send out my first TRUTH on TRUTH Social very soon. TMTG was founded with a mission to give a voice to all. I'm excited to soon beginning sharing my thoughts on TRUTH Social and to fight back against Big Tech. Everyone asks me why doesn't someone stand up to Big Tech? Well, we will soon!"

I mean, first off, it's an interesting world in which you can both claim to be silenced, but also (a) put out a press release read by millions and (b) launch your own damn social network. Doesn't seem that "silent" to me, but what do I know?

Anyway, given that Trump claims that the mission here is "to give voice to all," I was pretty interested in Truth Social's terms of service which (unsurprisingly), make it clear they can kick you off for any reason they want at all. Specifically, it says:

We reserve the right, but not the obligation, to:

(1) monitor the Site for violations of these Terms of Service;

(2) take appropriate legal action against anyone who, in our sole discretion, violates the law or these Terms of Service, including without limitation, reporting such user to law enforcement authorities;

(3) in our sole discretion and without limitation, refuse, restrict access to, limit the availability of, or disable (to the extent technologically feasible) your access or any of your contributions or any portion thereof; or

(4) otherwise manage the Site in a manner designed to protect our rights and property and to facilitate the proper functioning of the Site.

In other words, like every other website out there, Truth Social will moderate content.

Also, there's this:

If we terminate or suspend your account for any reason, you are prohibited from registering and creating a new account under your name, a fake or borrowed name, your email address or the name of any third party, even if you may be acting on behalf of the third party.

In addition to terminating or suspending your account, we reserve the right to take appropriate legal action, including without limitation pursuing civil, criminal, and injunctive redress.

So, it sure sounds like Truth Social, giving voice to all, is pretty damn sure it's going to have to kick people off its site (and maybe even sue them!). And why might they kick you off? Well, there's a very long list of "Prohibited Activities." I'll highlight some of them...

use the Site to advertise or offer to sell goods and services.

How much do you want to bet that Trump himself will violate this?

engage in unauthorized framing of or linking to the Site.

If you LINK TO THE SITE in an "unauthorized" way, they can remove your account.

trick, defraud, or mislead us and other users, especially in any attempt to learn sensitive account information such as user passwords;

MISLEADING OTHER USERS is grounds for having your account banished. So much freedom.

use any information obtained from the Site in order to harass, abuse, or harm another person.

This kind of thing is standard on all social media sites -- but which is notable because it's what many Trumpists get kicked off other platforms for. And yet, here it is.

use the Site as part of any effort to compete with us or otherwise use the Site and/or the Content for any revenue-generating endeavor or commercial enterprise.

Any effort to use the site to make money and they'll shut you down. That's... weird.

harass, annoy, intimidate, or threaten any of our employees or agents engaged in providing any portion of the Site to you.

If you annoy Trump or any of his employees, no more Truth for you!

upload or transmit (or attempt to upload or to transmit) viruses, Trojan horses, or other material, including excessive use of capital letters and spamming (continuous posting of repetitive text), that interferes with any party’s uninterrupted use and enjoyment of the Site or modifies, impairs, disrupts, alters, or interferes with the use, features, functions, operation, or maintenance of the Site.

One of those is not like the others. Excessive use of capital letters? I mean, that's not banned on any other social media platform I know of. Seems a lot less "freedomy" than we were led to believe. Also... excessive use of capital letters? Can I think of a famous social media user who regularly made use of that... hmm... who could that be...?

Also, there's an indemnity clause (a pretty broad one actually), so that if they get sued for something, you may be on the hook for the legal bills:

You agree to defend, indemnify, and hold us harmless, including our subsidiaries, affiliates, and all of our respective officers, agents, partners, and employees, from and against any loss, damage, liability, claim, or demand, including reasonable attorneys’ fees and expenses, made by any third party due to or arising out of: (1) use of the Site; (2) breach of these Terms of Service; (3) any breach of your representations and warranties set forth in these Terms of Service; (4) your violation of the rights of a third party, including but not limited to intellectual property rights; or (5) any overt harmful act toward any other user of the Site with whom you connected via the Site.

Notwithstanding the foregoing, we reserve the right, at your expense, to assume the exclusive defense and control of any matter for which you are required to indemnify us, and you agree to cooperate, at your expense, with our defense of such claims. We will use reasonable efforts to notify you of any such claim, action, or proceeding which is subject to this indemnification upon becoming aware of it.

So, when I first wrote this article I had a paragraph noting that once it actually launched I expected that Truth Social would speedrun the content moderation learning curve just like every MAGA-wannabe social network before it. But... of course, it's even faster than that. You see, despite saying it wasn't open, a bunch of fairly enterprising people figured out how to access the site and sign up for accounts via an unadvertised link. So someone set up a Donald J. Trump account. And posted quite an image.

Someone else created their own Donald Trump account:

And a Mike Pence account:

And thus we learned that, indeed, the "freedom loving" Truth Social... is already banning accounts.

Freedom is so fleeting. I mean, it went away even faster than all those other Trumpist social media sites. Oh, and it seems notable that even pre-launch, Trump's "freedom" loving social media site has text ready to go for suspended accounts:

You can no longer use your account, and your profile and other data are no longer accessible. You can still login to request a backup of your data until the data is fully removed, but we will retain some data to prevent you from evading the suspension.

So... it seems that Truth Social has "permanent suspensions" all ready to go. Just like every other social media website, of course. But, at least they don't present themselves as the antithesis of those other social media sites while all doing the same thing.

Either way, this can't be a good week for all those other super thirsty MAGA wannabe social networks. Gab is still out there pretending Trump is posting on its platform (they just repost every one of his press releases on his "verified" account and say they've "reserved" the account for him). Then, of course, there was Parler, who promised not to remove content, but whose former CEO gleefully told reporters that he was suspending "leftist trolls." And, then, of course, there was Gettr, which was taken over and "launched" by former close Trump aide, Jason Miller, and which also speedran the content moderation learning curve. Miller was unable to get his recently former boss to get on his own platform, and now they'll be competitors.

And, hey, competition is a good thing. Let a million social networks bloom. But don't expect one that is actually "taking on Big Tech" or guaranteeing that everyone has a voice. Because that's not Truth Social. It's just more lies.

Oh, and there are even some people suggesting that Truth Social is merely a reskin of Mastodon, as it matches almost exactly. If that's the case, then it's almost certainly violating Mastodon's AGPL license. And, considering that Truth Social's terms of service say that it is forbidden for you to:

copy or adapt the Site’s software, including but not limited to Flash, PHP, HTML, JavaScript, or other code.

Then it seems that it certainly would violate such an open source license. And, I'm not even going to ask why they're including "Flash" in that list other than to wonder where they copied this list from...

Filed Under: content moderation, donald trump, hacked, mastodon, social media, terms of service
Companies: tmtg, trump media and technology, truth social