Posted on 06/11/2022 7:52:30 AM PDT by semimojo
The irony is rich: Truth Social, Donald Trump’s Twitter copycat claiming it is “free from political discrimination,” has reportedly banned users who posted information from Thursday’s congressional hearing on the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol — in which the former president is a key focus.
That’s according to several posts on Twitter by users who claimed Truth Social was censoring them. Reps for Trump Media & Technology Group, which owns and operates Truth Social, did not respond to a request for comment.
Travis Allen, whose Twitter bio describes him as an information security analyst, on Thursday evening posted a screenshot from the Truth Social app that said “Account suspended,” and he wrote: “My Truth Social account was just permanently suspended for talking about the January 6th Committee hearings.”
He added, “So much for ‘free speech.’ This is censorship!” Allen did not provide details about what allegedly led to Truth Social kicking him off the platform.
“Seeing a lot of folks getting banned from Trump’s Truth Social for posting updates about the January 6 Committee hearings,” Max Burns, communications director for Democratic New York State Assemblywoman Yuh-Line Niou, tweeted Friday. “Apparently free speech has its limits even in Trumpland.”
Also Friday morning, another Twitter user reported, “Just put out my first post on Truth social and they deleted it. Real freedom of speech champs there.”
Truth Social’s terms of service state, “We reserve the right to, in our sole discretion and without notice or liability, deny access to and use of the service (including blocking certain IP addresses), to any person for any reason or for no reason… We may terminate your use or participation in the service or delete [your account and] any content or information that you posted at any time, without warning, in our sole discretion.” (Twitter’s terms of service include similar language.) In the U.S., under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, internet platforms like Truth Social have legal protections for their content-moderation decisions — a carve-out that Trump unsuccessfully sought to revoke when he occupied the White House.
Twitter permanently banned Trump in the days after the Jan. 6, 2021, riot citing the risk of ongoing violence after he posted a video praising the violent mob seeking to overturn the 2020 election. Billionaire Elon Musk, whose $44 billion bid for Twitter is pending, has called Twitter’s ban of the ex-president a mistake and a decision he would reverse.
Earlier this year, as a counter to the alleged anti-conservative bias of Big Tech, Trump launched Truth Social. It’s not clear how many users are on Truth Social. Trump currently has 3.2 million followers on the app; before he was banned from Twitter, he had more than 88 million followers.
As of March 31, 2022, Trump Media & Technology Group had not generated any revenue to date and has warned investors that “TMTG may never generate any operating revenues or ever achieve profitable operations.” Sarasota, Fla.-based TMTG had approximately 40 full-time employees as of the end of March, per a regulatory filing by Digital World Acquisition Corp., a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) that intends to merge with TMTG.
At some point, Trump’s media company plans to launch a subscription-streaming service called TMTG+ with a range of right-wing and “non-woke” content, including “Trump-specific programming” as well as “blue-collar comedy” and “cancelled shows.”
Consider the source. Variety.
I warned this was going to happen before it went live. They banned another for posting anti-vaxx info
“I signed up just to be a troll and a disruptor and got my account banned!”
Exactly. “But muh free speech!”
There’s also a big to do about Dr. Sherri tenpenny being banned from TruthSocial because she’s anti-Covid VAX. People are saying that Trump does not want anybody talking down his biggest achievement. I don’t know what to think about this.
Just a random thought... Trump should set up a non-profit and sell “free the DC political prisoners” tee-shirts and flags, use the Vietnam POW flags as a model.
This is a flat out lie. I’ve been monitoring and posting on the Jan 6th threads. Plenty of brain dead liberals posting stupid stuff on TruthSocial. I’ve been making fun of them. I post under JoSixChip.
The big controversy over there right now is the recent decision by Truth Social to cap users at following no more than 7,500 accounts. (You can still accumulate an unlimited amount of followers.)
The reasoning behind that is apparently to provoke more interaction by being more selective about what accounts you choose to follow. Also, to stop the "trains" which I find very annoying.
For those unfamiliar with trains, they are basically posts with about 20 or so usernames that you follow. Then you re-Truth and your name gets added to the list for others to follow. Sort of like a high tech chain letter. As a result of those trains, some users have accumulated tens of thousands of followers and that apparently irks the "checkmarks" over there as they feel all those followers are ill-gotten gains.
The inherent problem with following so many accounts is that your feed becomes unreadable. You read one post and about 600 new ones show up behind it. It's impossible to keep up with a feed when you are following many thousands of accounts, many of which are just re-posting trains.
It's a pickle for Truth Social because they are trying to improve the experience as they grow the platform out. There are now well over three million active users over there and bots are becoming more and more of a problem.
Growing pains.
My observation after being on the site for a couple of weeks is that they get a lot of spam attacks. Also there are bugs in the site - for example, there’s no way to force unfollow with some accounts - and they are still working on some features.
There are clearly hackers and spammers trying to compromise the site and so they keep having these outbreaks where nothing works.
I have to wonder about people getting banned for “making one post” - I kind of went on a snarkfest about someone on the site and I didn’t get a warning from a mod or anything - I didn’t mention names or make contact with that person. Spam accounts started following me at that point but nothing else happened. Everybody seems like they’re kind of on their own little trip, LOL.
I reported one guy who was CLEARLY spamming and his account disappeared almost immediately.
Therefore I think some of these claims are suspect. Liberals like to have multiple accounts on every website so they can pretend to have friends and/or influence. To them wielding 20 accounts on one site is like a standard thing.
And remind everyone that he never lifted a finger for these people?
This is suspect. There are a lot of anti-vax positions expressed on Truth Social. If those accounts were all banned, I suspect that experiment would end. Abruptly.
Not a good look for Truth Social, though I’m not surprised and pretty much expected this. They were putting this forward as some sort of ‘free speech’ forum, and I knew that wasn’t going to be the case.
Good. They would flood the site with their crap and essentially conduct a DDOS attack. They are not legitimate participants. Their goal is to destroy the mission of the site. It’s like the ACLU using constitutional rights to destroy the constitution. The rules at Truth Social are not a suicide pact.
Everyone’s all for free speech until the trolls show up.
Well, that is very negative. Not saying that your wrong though.
“And remind everyone that he never lifted a finger for these people?”
I’ve always wondered how those arrested and rotting under terrible conditions along with their family members feel about Trump now, my guess is they feel totally abandoned by both Trump and the Republican Party. It’s shameful how their predicament is pretty much ignored.
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