Truth Social, like Parler and Gettr, looks to be structured for mostly one-way communication, broadcast primarily to an audience of Trumpist dead-enders
Conservative alternative social networks keep making the same mistakes — I. — Today, let's talk about some of the less obvious ways …
PlatformerCasey Newton
Context & Ripple Effects
The post-ban surge sent users and right-wing personalities to a cluster of alternative apps, but related coverage says that growth on Telegram, Gab, and Gettr later stalled. Truth Social entered a field already facing a fight for users against Gettr and Parler, rather than an empty market.
The article identifies a shared product constraint: these services are built around broadcasting to a committed political audience, not the reciprocal interactions that make a social network harder to leave. Later coverage reinforces the importance of that distinction, attributing Truth Social’s lead over peers largely to Trump’s own posting.
First-order effects
Truth Social, Parler, and Gettr must compete for the same politically aligned audience and prominent broadcasters, with limited evidence in the supplied coverage that their audiences are expanding through broader network participation.
Truth Social’s near-term differentiation depends heavily on its association with Trump, while Parler and Gettr lack that same named draw in the coverage.
Second-order effects
The difficulty of persuading users to leave mainstream apps makes a broadcast-first design a competitive disadvantage: rivals are contesting attention without a clear mechanism for building denser user-to-user engagement.
If alternative political networks continue to rely on a small set of broadcasters, the category is likely to separate into leader-led media channels rather than durable, broadly participatory social platforms.
The trend: Politically aligned alternative networks are becoming more dependent on marquee broadcasters and tightly targeted audiences as early migration spikes fail to produce sustained network growth.
“I might be more inclined to believe that were Parler, Gettr, or Truth Social actual free-speech maximalists, removing posts only when legally required to. But they're not”-@CaseyNewton https://www.platformer.news/ ... Per TOS, Truth Social will remove anything “misleading.” GL w…
So I downloaded Truth Social just to get a look at the terms of service. In a shock to no one, it contains a lot of weirdness. Here are most of the banned things, most of which are constitutionally-protected. Also, a typo in the first one. Lol “censorship free” 🙄 https://twitter.…
Here @CaseyNewton illustrates how chronological feeds create a worse user experience than algorithmic feeds. 1. You don't discover new content or people to follow. 2. Feeds become dominated by people who post frequently. This is why anti-algorithmic feed legislation is dumb. http…
call me picky but if you're going to be a not-really-free-speech free speech platform you'd better make your rules *at least* as funny as the site that was going to ban blasphemy https://twitter.com/...
Right wingers will never hang out on social media exclusively with other right wingers because there's nobody to troll and they don't even like each other https://twitter.com/...
truth social isn't a free speech app based on their TOS they're more restrictive than twitter, which is a great way to fail from the start 💀😂 https://twitter.com/...
Shares of Digital World Acquisition Corp, the blank-check company behind former U.S. President Donald Trump's new social media venture, Truth Social, rose about 14% as the app topped downloads on Apple's App Store https://www.reuters.com/... https://twitter.com/...
Joined Parler for a while to see what it was like. Was all pro-Trump, all the time. The lack of opposition made it dull, and activity seemed low. Truth Social seems like it's the same, but could well be a good money-maker for Trump if his supporters see $ services as a donation h…
the problem with all the rightwing platforms is that they don't have any libs to own and that's the thing the right craves the most if the platforms were really smart they would use GPT-3 to seed the platforms with liberal bots to keep their users engaged https://twitter.com/...
You should be reading anything @CaseyNewton writes but this on conservative Twitter clones is worth your time. Thinking in particular about his argument that it'll be a conservative echo chamber because liberals will stay away ... (1/2) https://www.platformer.news/ ...
“There is no better sign of a rushed implementation than the fact that you can't onboard anybody. So I'm hard-pressed to understand why anyone would trust that these people would keep their information safe.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ...
This story by @drewharwell about the disastrous launch of Trump's Truth Social has everything — TRUH, Section 230, terms of service, https://healthcare.gov/, potential copyright issue with the logo... https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ...
Trump's new free-speech, no-censorship site bans anything “false,” “indecent,” “misleading,” “profane,” “obscene,” “filthy” or “otherwise objectionable.” Also, no “sexually suggestive” phrases. Or attempts to “trick” or “mislead.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ...
What's extra weird is that there are a bunch of fake spam Truth Social sites that, for now at least, work better and have more features than the real site. Trump supporters have been friending each other and posting memes there. Maybe they should just stay https://www.washingtonp…
Hard to overstate what a shitshow Trump's Truth Social is: https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ... Though the iPhone version doesn't work, they also seem to have forgotten to make an Android version. 40% of Americans use Android. Also they stole their logo from a British company.
New: Trump used to joke that his son could've made https://healthcare.gov/ for “about $2.” Now he's facing a disastrous website launch of his own. “The basic thing they needed to actually get right to get someone in the door, they couldn't get right” https://www.washingtonpost.co…