Technical glitches overshadow the launch of Truth Social

Donald Trump’s newest media company, Trump Media and Technology Group, plans to launch its own social network soon. Truth Social, as the platform is to be called, has been tested by around 500 selected people since last week. According to American media reports, she was briefly available on Monday in the American version of Apple’s App Store, but various users reported problems registering and were unable to access the network. The official launch is still pending, according to earlier information from the Trump Media Technology Group, it should take place by the end of March at the latest.

With Truth Social, Donald Trump wants to rebuild the direct line to his supporters. The former president was banned from Twitter in January 2021, where he had a following of almost 90 million people. The platform accused him of instigating the storming of the Capitol and calling for violence. Facebook and YouTube also blocked Trump. He saw this as censorship and complained about the restriction of his freedom rights. With Truth Social he now wants nothing less than to “save freedom of expression”.

“Truth Social will give Donald Trump back the public platform that the hated tech companies took away from him without further ado,” writes Claudia Franziska Brühwiler, private lecturer in American Studies at the University of St. Gallen, on request. In fact, in recent months Trump has had to turn to traditional media – i.e. the “mainstream media” he so hates – if he wants to go public. Before that, he was able to directly influence some of the reporting with his tweets.

Own servers offer independence

With his Trump Media and Technology Group, Trump is now launching not just another right-wing alternative network, but a media group with its own servers. He wants to prevent what happened to Parler in January 2021: The network, which was launched in 2018 as an alternative to Twitter and downloaded millions of times by Trump supporters, was taken offline by Amazon Web Services (AWS). AWS had accused Parler of spreading hate speech and calls for violence via the platform and blocked the network from its servers. With Truth Social, Trump is now building his own media company that relies as little as possible on cooperation with other companies.

The question now, however, is whether Trump wants to achieve more with social truth than economic gain and the creation of an echo chamber that pleases him, writes the USA expert Brühwiler. For months there has been speculation as to whether Trump wants to launch a candidacy for the next presidential election. He himself seems to keep pointing this out, for example in his first post on Truth Social, which his son shared on Twitter: “Get ready,” Trump writes, “your favorite president will see you soon.”

However, Trump never formally launched his candidacy. At the moment he seems to enjoy the role in the background, as the kingmaker of the Republican Party, writes Brühwiler. “This way of exercising power may be more attractive for him than venturing into the election campaign again in 2024.”

Either way, millions of Americans who would love to see Trump back in the White House should be happy about the progress made on Truth Social. However, some are also likely to view a development critically: “content moderation” on the platform – i.e. the rules for when posts and comments are deleted because they contradict the terms of use or applicable laws.

Walking the tightrope between hate speech and freedom of expression

Trump had promised to allow as many opinions as possible on Truth Social, i.e. not to delete posts like Twitter and Facebook that spread unsecured – sometimes fictitious – information about vaccines or elections, for example. In the past few days, however, it has been announced that Truth Social will also moderate the content on its platform. Opposite the Republican TV station “Fox News” said Devin Nunesthe CEO of Trump Media and Technology Group, said they are working with Hive, a California startup, to moderate the content.

Hive analyzes all posts for unwanted content when they are uploaded. In particular, this is intended to keep pornography, terror propaganda, calls for violence and hate speech away from the platform. The startup works with artificial intelligence, but also employs 2.5 million freelancers who view posts manually and delete them if necessary. Conflicting goals between freedom of expression and security are also becoming apparent at Truth Social. Because the moderation is particularly tricky with posts that can be viewed both as prohibited hate speech and as free expression of opinion that deserves protection.

An example: the Bayerischer Rundfunk reported recently about an image of a dragon with a Jewish star around its neck being stabbed with symbols resembling SS runes. The image circulated on Parler, who also hired Hive to moderate the content. The post can be interpreted in different ways: as prohibited anti-Semitic hate speech, or as art worthy of protection and free expression of opinion. There are thousands of such borderline cases. With Truth Social having to decide whether to allow or remove them, the network soon finds itself in the same position as the mainstream platforms Trump accuses of censorship.

Not perfect, but better than nothing

Kevin Guo, CEO of Hive, downplays the trade-off between preventing hate speech and ensuring freedom of expression. “Most of the posts that deal with hate speech or calls for violence are very clear,” he says in an interview with the NZZ. However, he admits that his solution cannot possibly filter all problematic content. “We find maybe 90 percent,” Guo estimates.

Technically, Hive is still a long way from the quality level of content moderation on large platforms such as Facebook or Twitter, experts warn in one Washington Post article and further criticize that many of the freelancers at Hive are poorly trained. Guo replies that unlike Twitter and Facebook, his customers, i.e. small social networks, cannot afford armies of content moderators. “We’re not perfect, but we’re much better than nothing.”

In fact, Hive can already point to a noteworthy success in moderation: Parler, which was also excluded from the Android and Apple app stores after the storming of the Capitol, has now been activated again in the Apple store thanks to Hive’s moderation.

Truth Social is preparing for a flood of illegal content

Meanwhile, Truth Social prepares for the big storm. On Fox News, unnamed sources from the network said they were preparing for the platform to be “flooded” with illegal content shortly after launch.

This could be observed in the past with other right-alternative platforms. Pornographic content spread on Parler shortly after its launch. And on Gettr, the network that was founded by Trump supporters in the summer, according to one research of the magazine “Politico” various terrorist groups footage of executions and other depictions glorifying violence. Even today, videos of the terrorist organization IS can still be found on Gettr. Gettr did not comment on this when asked.

Truth Social, which also ignored media inquiries from the NZZ, now seems to have learned from the experiences of Gettr and Parler. In fact, it’s important that Truth Social explicitly protects itself against criminals and hackers, says Arthur Bradley, an analyst at Tech Against Terrorism, an organization that helps social networks combat terrorism propaganda. Every new platform would sooner or later be tried out by criminals as a communication channel, says Bradley when asked.

However, because of its proximity to Donald Trump, Truth Social could be particularly attractive to extremists. “We have repeatedly observed how violent groups among Donald Trump supporters try to recruit new members,” says Bradley. Whether illegal content would actually be shared on social networks depends heavily on how those responsible respond to this material, says Bradley. If algorithms and employees quickly found and deleted the posts, pedophiles and terrorists would usually quickly move to other platforms.

Truth Social has been hacked before

As soon as Truth Social is launched, it must also be able to withstand politically motivated hacks. The hacker collective Anonymous managed to break into the platform in October, even though it was not yet online. That was enough for the attackers Announcing Truth Social in the Apple Storeto gain access to the network. In about two hours, they created profiles, including one about Donald Trump, and posted photos of pigs and feces.

Hacks at Gettr and Parler were less harmless. At Parler sucked in January 2021, hackers stole millions of posts from closed pages and published them online. Since Parler also saves the location of the devices when posts are published, hackers were able to deduce the whereabouts of individual users. At Gettr stole In June, hackers took the personal data of 90,000 users and published them on the Internet.

So the acid test at Truth Social is coming up soon. The platform now has to show that it can keep hacks and criminals at bay. And that it does not curtail freedom of expression as well, although it moderates content just like established social networks.