Former U.S. president Donald Trump launches 'TRUTH' social media platform | Hacker News Reader

Former U.S. president Donald Trump launches 'TRUTH' social media platform

reuters.com

39 pointskoolba78 comments

Uninformed opinion: this will mostly be ignored and will fade into obscurity. I think the trump years left a bad impression for most Americans, even Republicans, and we’re all just over his nonsense.

Oh how I hope you are right, but from what I see, he still has a lot of support and believers.

78% of Republicans want to see him run for President again [1]. I don't think he's faded into obscurity at all. This new social media thing though? Yea it will probably go the way of Parler and the other "platforms consisting entirely of people kicked off of other platforms".

1: https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/577453-nearly-80-perce...

78% of Republicans is actually pretty dreadful. I would expect that number to be closer to the mid 90s for a party's former president. Can you imagine what the numbers would be for Obama?

I wish. My drive home takes me past two, “Trump Won. You know it and I know it.” signs. It’s a bit crazy.

Flagged because? It definitely is worthy of dicussion in a tech forum like this one.

I flagged it because the social media website doesn't seem to exist yet so all this is is a press release (nothing technical) and it's a press release about a particularly inflammatory person and concept

Here is its website.

https://truthsocial.com/

Politics aside, HN demos loads of landing page startups like this. I don't believe it's a valid reason to flag it.

IMO it's impossible to have a civilized discussion about Trump, so the flag is justified. It's fine to know he's making his digital platform, but I don't want to read or talk more about him.

Trump, like all other demagogues, thrives in conflict and division, and those are all you can expect from discussing him.

Your preferences to not hear about something aside, you can have civilized discussion about myriad controversial figures historical and contemporary—Hitler, Mussolini, Mao, Putin, Manson, Bundy, Judas, and Kanye—why not Trump?

It doesn't need to devolve into contention. We don't flag COVID, Apple, or Rust articles because they tend to devolve into contention.

I'd argue that COVID is a critical health issue that we're still amidst, and Apple or Rust provide value that even their detractors recognize, so their discussion is useful even if it tends to contention.

Trump doesn't provide any kind of value, and is not significantly relevant as a historic figure, so we would be having contention just for the sake of it. If we're allowing this, then there's many demagogue leaders in the world that need coverage about their attempts to gain political support.

I didn't flag this post, but I have no problem if others flag it. It's empty calories to our HN diet.

+1 to basically everything you said, that's why I flagged

Trump changed perception of reality itself, for millions of Americans. Things will never be the same. The most relevant historical US political figure in decades. He's polling higher than anyone else if he decides to run again. So you're probably way off in your assertions.

> you can have civilized discussion about myriad controversial figures historical and contemporary—Hitler, Mussolini, Mao, Putin, Manson, Bundy, Judas, and Kanye

I don't disagree with your point, but man is that rough company for Kanye in that list!

>IMO it's impossible to have a civilized discussion about Trump, so the flag is justified.

Not everybody is as narrow minded as you. It is completely possible to talk about controversial subjects or even topics that you strongly disagree with. It's called being mature.

Guidelines:

> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.

> In a slide deck on its website, the company envisions eventually competing against Amazon.com's AWS cloud service and Google Cloud.

I guess this means they plan on running the service in their own data centers from the beginning, either because they fear getting deplatformed or are just still too radioactive for any major platform to handle? The long-term vision of competing with AWS is obviously bullshit spun to justify the large initial capital outlay.

Not a bad idea though. AWS for deplatformed people.

A bar for people who got kicked out of other bars — not the greatest business idea.

Working well for Gab, Epik domains and others. I don't see why this should not exist, wasn't Airbnb bad idea too?

I just checked the Gab front page and the feed is filled with heavily biased political content, anti-vaccination memes, and false claims about the 2020 election. This is not an exaggeration, it's every single post. And several of them are just screen shots of twitter posts too. I don't know if I would qualify that as working well.

> "I don't know if I would qualify that as working well."

Maybe not working well for you then. Other users on Gab seem to be happy that it is working well for them and that is okay.

Them them be.

It actually has very little to do with me and everything to do with Gab losing the fight against misinformation/disinformation. This doesn't benefit their users at all and doesn't work well for them as a startup, it prevents the network from growing as well as a number of other bad effects. Twitter (and even Facebook) have them beat significantly there. Edit: And even if they didn't then I'm sure you can understand, it's still very possible for a company to make a product that customers say they're happy with but that's also harmful and damaging. Tobacco products come to mind, but vaccine misinformation is also something that can get you hurt or killed.

Well, is it possible to run a profitable social media site that caps out at 10M users? Twitter with its vastly larger user base, just this quarter broke out of continuous losses. Consider also the demographics of Trump's base -- older, less tech-inclined. Not the target demographic for most advertisers. And the site will be radioactive for most vanilla companies.

Well, sometimes it is a good idea.

If the people getting kicked out, are being kicked out for completely legal behavior, that isn't disrupting the datacenter service, then it very much could be a good idea.

To stick with this bar analogy for way to long, if there were a bar in the 1950s that served black people who weren't allowed into the "regular" bars, I could see that being a good business, in some areas.

What if they got kicked out because they threatened to kill the bartender for cutting them off?

What if they got kicked out because they were black?

I think what the GP was trying to get across is that you’re making an argument from moral principles that doesn’t necessarily translate to situations without the same moral stakes. Opening a business to serve a minority excluded from mainstream establishments could be a morally righteous decision (as in the example you provided), a savvy business decision (e.g., mob-run gay bars in NYC in the early 1960’s), or both (like thriving businesses run by and for the black community during segregation).

Given the current state of what’s on Gab, it’s difficult to see how running a social network that caters to users & content banned from FB and Twitter could be a sound business decision —- what company wants their ads to run in a sea of vaccine disinformation and hate speech? —- so you need to justify it on moral grounds. And in that sense, I’m sorry, but it’s a bit insulting to compare Gab and Truth to businesses that deliberately bucked segregation or apartheid.

Lol can’t they just buy “bulletproof hosting” from shady foreign vendors? There’s a whole ecosystem of platforms that cater to hate speech sites, illegal pharmacies, phishing portals, etc.

So basically your own Cloudflare then using bulletproof hosting, hmmm not bad at all.

> I am excited to send out my first TRUTH on TRUTH Social very soon.

Looks like they're deciding to call posts "truths".

Wow. They really are creating a post truth society.

Underappreciated pun.

Or "Pravda" as it's called in Russia...

Wasn't that an Elon Musk thing?

https://www.rt.com/usa/427596-musk-pravda-news-check/

(Yes, I understand the irony of posting an ad about Musk's anti-propaghandi jokes .. written about in RT, the actual Pravda).

Well, it's about 37 years late but I see the Ministry of Truth is finding its footing.

Through the proxy of social media?

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/truth-social/id1586018825

Set aside the person and the name of the platform for a second.

There is a lot of technical baggage on all the social media platforms with how they implemented things like character limits, content auto-deletes, organization of content, etc.

How would you design a new social media platform now?

It looks like it's a re-skinned Mastodon instance.

I think even Gab is a mastodon instance as well.

I would build effective moderation into the core of the product to try to avoid the abuse and disinformation that has been a huge problem on Facebook and Twitter… but TRUTH seems to be built on the assumption that existing platforms just don’t have enough abuse and disinformation.

Dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28939896

How will this not run into the same buzzsaw as Parler? If this will include mobile, it will need to live on Apple and Google's walled gardens.

They can buy their own servers, routers ,switchers, firewalls, and storage, host in a datacenter (I've never heard of a colo space/REIT or a network provider disconnecting a racist terrorist for being a racist terrorist), setup their own BGP, DNS, DDOS mitigation (which would probably be the bulk of the hardware cost considering how much Trump and his supporters are hated).

Nobody can drive you from the internet, but they can increase the costs. Trump can afford to do this, but be real, this is just a publicity stunt, an old man calling for an ambulance not because he's sick but because he's sad and alone.

They can drive you from the internet pretty easily by refusing to peer with you or filtering your AS.

> it will need to live on Apple and Google's walled gardens

When I used to use Twitter, I only ever used the mobile website (I never installed the apps). It wasn't perfect, but meant I could use Twitter and not leak all of my personal information (contacts, etc).

If Truth had any sense, they would put a lot of energy into making sure the mobile web version worked as well as can be.

link to the actual social media site?

It doesn't exist yet.

https://truthsocial.com/

That's a landing page, not a social media site

https://truthsocial.com/

https://truthsocial.com/gdpr

>“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," Trump said in a written statement included in the release.

As much as I don't like the drama queenism of this guy, he's not wrong.

The TOS (edit: of the website TRUTH) explicitly allow them to remove anyone for basically any reason, and they specifically mention typing in all caps or disparaging the site, both things Trump has done on Twitter.

Okay? I don't see how that changes anything. Twitter can do whatever they want, but it's still unacceptable.

Edited because I was perhaps unclear. Unless you think it's unacceptable for TRUTH as well...

I'd disagree and I believe courts would disagree should a banned user take their case up legally. A ToS is agreed upon and when violated the company may ban you at their discretion.

Same scenario when a store has a "no shirt, no shoes, no service" sign. Or a high end restaurant requires people to wear a suit coat and tie.

Totally and legally acceptable.

It was pretty clear that he was purged from all the media platforms because the people who run the platforms do not like him. The events at the Capitol were just a smoke screen. The removal of Gab from all platforms was also a major red flag, but most people here didn't seem to mind the oligarchy as long as it's their guys who are in charge.

> It was pretty clear that he was purged from all the media platforms because the people who run the platforms do not like him.

Have you ever worked at a company where there's a strict code of behavior, but the CEO is a rich loud-mouthed douchebag and nobody can shut him up because they'd get fired?

I have. Kind of unfair, isn't it?

Unfair would be having a well documented code of conduct on a platform who's terms apply for everybody except the rich, and the rich are allowed to say whatever they want on this platform.

Twitter, Facebook and others have neither legal nor moral obligation to host Trump, or anybody else.

> Twitter, Facebook and others have neither legal nor moral obligation to host Trump, or anybody else.

I completely agree with this. So let's strip them of their section 230 rights[0] and let them have full control of their platform, instead of their bad faith application of censorship to political ideologies they disagree with. Why, for example, did Twitter and Facebook ban The Wall Street Journal's reporting on Hunter Biden's emails? Or why do they consistently block and remove Project Veritas reporting? This is compared to the dubious Steele dossier which is freely discussed.

Somehow the policies of these companies end up hurting right-wing/conservative media outlets more than left-wing media outlets.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230

Maybe he shouldn't have made a deal with the Taliban then?

Taliban was already on Twitter before that deal took place, so this is a moot point.

Thanks to Drumpf's efforts, the Taliban is now accepted as a legitimate government. Why would they be de-platformed as long as they follow Twitter's rules?

Hell, even Taliban recruiting online is now officially no different than the JDF or the USMC recruiting online. Just another government recruiting for their army.

As long as they aren't preaching/encouraging violence (besides recruiting for their military), or preaching hatred, then they are within the terms of service.

I don't know, maybe ask Twitter as to why they have harboured the Taliban on their platform for so long and allowed them to grow?

You have the right to free speech, to say what you want. You do not have the right to a platform.

So you inevitably build your own, and they did.

as far as I know it ain't up yet and the guy has a pretty public history of making loud proclamations that go nowhere, so "and they did" might be a bit premature

When they do go up are they any easier to shutdown? I don't see how Gab going away time soon.

Mobile apps may be easier to take down, but then they make the transition the open web.

True enough. I've also found the mastadon is a better experience for myself than twitter and I like the decentralized nature of that platform.

100% agreed. I don't like Trump or his political platform, but the way (social) media handled the last election is just as disagreeable.

There's an argument that corporations should not be forced to host content they don't agree with, but perhaps this just means that the social media landscape should be taken away from corporations and become something like a public good.

The moment big tech started curating what is available, they simultaneously opened a can of worms on censorship, and they also should've lost the safe harbor allowances.

We can't have unpopular opinions completely silenced if we are meant to have constructive discourse. Of course, if the objective is to build siloed echo chambers whose only interaction is borderline fanatic ripping at each other's throats, then the current trajectory is 100% on course.

Understanding and constructive discussion can only arise in an environment where we try to understand the opposition, instead of trying to silence them or find reasons to vilify them.

> Understanding and constructive discussion can only arise in an environment where we try to understand the opposition, ...

But people aren't trying to understand each other, nor are they trying to have constructive discussions. The very nature of the platforms makes that really, really hard, and it just doesn't happen.

Instead, the platforms are used to whip up mobs and dog-whistle followers, and that's a "Bad Thing^{(tm)}".

Consider the paradox of tolerance:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

Giving intolerant people a platform is a recipe for bad things to happen.

Those in power hold relevance with their terrible behavior on social media. Those without power don't hold relevance.

Except Taliban never had terrible behavior on social media

It's funny both articles posted here refuse to use the proper title "President Donald Trump", they add a qualifier or won't capitalize it in insult like they do "white", very passive aggressive.

I'm not sure how you got the idea that "former President Trump" is incorrect. It's pretty standard style.

Reuters uses the exact same terminology for Obama [1] too. Same goes for the AP [2] and the BBC [3].

Even the U.S. Government prescribes the use of "former President" [4]

[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/us/obama-holds-groundbreaking-...

[2] https://apnews.com/article/ed-gillespie-terry-mcauliffe-ralp...

[3] https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-58937970

[4] https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-STYLEMANUAL-2016/pdf...

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