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
(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.
How much do you want to bet that Trump himself will violate this?
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.
The "donaldjtrump" account of Trump's TRUTH Social has already been hacked. pic.twitter.com/LDQ5w24tcV
— Drew Harwell (@drewharwell) October 21, 2021
Someone else created their own Donald Trump account:
Was just able to setup an account using the handle @donaldtrump on 'Truth Social,' former President Donald Trump's new social media website.
Although the site is not officially open, a URL was discovered allowing users to sign up anyway. pic.twitter.com/MRMQzjNhma
— Mikael Thalen (@MikaelThalen) October 21, 2021
And a Mike Pence account:
Anyone can create an account on Trump's social network TRUTH Social using a publicly available link. I literally just registered "mikepence." The site hasn't even launched yet and it's already this vulnerable pic.twitter.com/v9nPN8ibDS
— Drew Harwell (@drewharwell) October 21, 2021
And thus we learned that, indeed, the "freedom loving" Truth Social... is already banning accounts.
A hush falls upon TRUTH Social. pic.twitter.com/HSKMTMlEMU
— Drew Harwell (@drewharwell) October 21, 2021
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
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