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Comment by alkonaut | Hacker News Reader

> we're not removing anything unless it's clearly illegal or we get a court order to do so" is a reasonable pitch in my mind.

A reasonable pitch to users. But to advertisers and others? Not so much.

If you create a social platform that appeals very strongly to a small minority but where the content creates strong objection in a larger group, then companies don’t want to be seen there. And running a social media platform is expensive. User demand isn’t what I’d worry about, it’s sales (of ads and paid subscriptions). I don’t think there is a market for either of those if Parler/Gab were any indication.

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>>[T]he content creates strong objection in a larger group, then companies don’t want to be seen there.

Why would you need advertising or even make money in the traditional sense for that matter? We have seen how social media companies have entered into overt political actions to control narratives. Trump is attempting to build his own version of this. And it's still early but he's not doing a bad job so far, he's raking in tons of money from investors. These "investors" aren't looking to make money, they are investing in political influence similar to those people who were pumping billions into the Clinton foundation to buy access/influence.

> Why would you need advertising or even make money in the traditional sense for that matter?

You don't. But running these operations at scale is extremely expensive, so you need a lot of income. It's possible to run it as a money sink provided you e.g. have investor money or, as in the case of previous right wing attempts, "donor money". But regardless of how the money is raised, it's rarely a charity that can go on forever. Everything we have seen so far indicates this isn't really a viable investment. Gab, Parler and similar have exactly this business model: operate at a loss through donor money. The audience isn't nearly big enough to motivate the spend, and the cost scales linearly with the audience unless there is a big ad income. The question shouldn't be why this should fail, but what sets it apart from Gab and Parler, other than "This time it's Trump".

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