Truth Social

Tesla CEO Elon Musk took to Twitter on Wednesday writing that its competitor Truth Social, which he says has a “terrible name,” only exists because of ...

Change % Change Tesla CEO Elon Musk took to Twitter on Wednesday writing that its competitor Truth Social, which he says has a "terrible name," only exists because of Twitter’s censorship of free speech.

The Trump-backed social media app is inundated with phony accounts and features that don't work. It also hides some posts, including those with curse words.

Like Twitter and Facebook, Truth Social has a terms of service that states that illegal activity is not allowed on the app. In some cases, the app appeared stricter than Twitter. While Twitter allows some pornographic content, Truth Social forbids sexual content and language altogether, according to its terms of service. But Nathaniel Persily, a professor at Stanford Law School, said the notion that Truth Social could be an uncensored social network was ultimately far-fetched. Ms. Wu worked with Twitter to develop safety guidelines after Gamergate, the 2014 internet campaign to troll critics of the male-dominated gaming industry. The former president has posted only one Truth and that was back in February: “Get Ready! Your favorite President will see you soon!” To date, he has accrued 1.88 million followers. Trying to do a keyword search for a Truth was nonfunctional. And while some posts that were prohibited on Twitter were available on Truth Social, other types of posts were hidden because of curse words. After choosing a user name and avatar (I uploaded a picture of my Labrador), I began my Truth Social experience. I decided to wade into this stew by testing Truth Social. Despite its hype, the app had a glitchy debut. The app’s surge in popularity this week caught the attention of Mr. Musk, a self-proclaimed free speech absolutist. Truth Social has long positioned itself as an alternative to Twitter and Facebook, both of which famously barred Mr. Trump from their sites after the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol last year. At the same time, there is more uncertainty about Twitter. Some Twitter users deactivated their accounts this week after the news broke that Mr. Musk was buying the site and questions arose about how he might change the platform.

Elon Musk's bid to buy Twitter has created an unexpected race to the right with the former president.

In that light, it’s not surprising that Twitter might try to change its public perception to appeal to the same group of users. It’s Musk agreeing with the complaints about Twitter — so much so that he decided to buy the company and affect those changes. By migrating to Rumble’s hosting platform, though, the company will be able to “scale significantly,” it said in a news release — adding “on a new and cancel-culture-free cloud platform.” (By “cloud platform,” the company meant a separate company that operates the servers on which Truth Social’s content will live.) Musk replied that the situation “[s]ounds pretty bad,” which, as presented, it does — since it’s meant to sound bad and is not demonstrably true. Gadde is Twitter’s top attorney and was on the podcast in 2019 to discuss the site’s moderation policies, for which she is responsible. The meme also focused a great deal of hostility on Gadde, as The Post has reported. This is the same reason that Trump himself was suspended from Twitter: not because of his opinions but out of concern that he might again foment violence in Washington. Some users erroneously thought this was somehow Musk at the controls or, slightly more feasibly, Twitter tweaking its algorithms to be more conservative-friendly. He wasn’t complimentary, really, suggesting that “Truth Social” was a bad name and “Trumpet” a better one, which isn’t necessarily wrong. The result, at least for now, is that the social media giant appears to be trying to compete with Trump’s tiny start-up for the same pool of attention. The Newsmax host pointed to the social media platform Parler being booted from its cloud-service providers, something that Nunes agreed wouldn’t happen to Truth Social. And the news about Musk’s acquisition of Twitter gave him even more reason to be booked as a guest.