Trump's Truth Social app branded a disaster | Hacker News Reader

Trump's Truth Social app branded a disaster

bbc.com

33 pointslalaland112514 comments

Forget all the obvious slurs/jokes etc. There’s a fundamental business problem of all these new sites: MeWe, frank, truth social etc: fundamentally, and indeed by design, they aren’t differentiated from the incumbents.

The incumbents already have the market share / volume. Pretty much anybody who wants to use the new site will also remain on the older site because of all the other people they want to talk to or hear from.

The way to displace the incumbent is either to have a new feature that some segment wants (snap, TikTok) or rope in a new, largely disjoint audience (FB, sort of by accident — grabbed an audience that wanted to leave geocities or whatever behind).

This same problem happened with, for example, OS/2: it had a bunch of new features, but was 100% back compatible with Windows. So if you wanted a product for OS/2 customers you might as well write it for the Windows API you already knew. This might be a analogically to the problem that these new platforms do have a differentiated (well, sharp subset) audience, and apparently a lot of fun posting and complaining on the legacy platforms is the performance outrage generated. If everybody agrees with you, where’s the fun?

Apple had this problem when transitioning away from OS 9 to OSX — back compatibility was good enough that some companies, most notoriously Adobe, didn’t bother to switch until Apple cut the old tech off at the knees. When you’re a new entrant, you don’t have control over the actions of the old company, so that avenue is not available to you.

There is certainly a "what's the point" feel to the new sites. Most of them made a conscious decision to essentially copy the functionality of the old sites, minus what they consider the censorship and bias. However, what most of them don't offer, at least so far, is an innovation that compels people to use their product.

Facebook offered innovations over MySpace -- it used smart algorithms to help discover friends and family quickly, and it initially targeted the elite college student market, at a time when MySpace seemed to cater more to musical bands than to the general public; it was expected you would search for your favorite artists. Whereas, it's burdensome to search for friends. Facebook also offered a cleaner design that was visually appealing and easy to navigate.

Rumble is emerging as the primary alternative to Youtube out of a crowded field of dozens of video hosts including Bitchute, PeerTube, DTube, Odysey, Banned.Video, GunStreamer, etc. However, Rumble's UX is unappealing; they seem to have put little effort into niceties like keyboard shortcuts and comment management. You can't use the left and right arrows to jog the video back and forth, for example, though "f" does toggle full screen. [EDIT the "j" and "l" keys jump back and forward 10 seconds, and "t" toggles theater mode.] The comments can't be sorted by criteria; they simply are listed in chronological order.

FrankSpeech is Mike Lindell's vlog platform; the only user interaction provided, so far, is Disqus comments following articles.

MeWe has a visually appealing design but nothing to really differentiate it from Facebook. Facebook is better.

Gettr is possibly the best-of-breed Twitter replacement, with decent UX across their mobile apps and web app, but they still have a lot of work to do. They're emphasizing live streaming, which apparently their leadership considers a high priority. Live streaming is certainly nice to have, but they still lack private messaging, a feature that many users are clamoring for. Listen to your users. Also, they need better "trending" features; there's something now, but it's minimal.

I got an account on Truth Social and it's very beta, feels buggy and incomplete. It's only available for iOS mobile devices at the moment. There's a private messaging button that is not yet implemented. I don't believe in reviewing products that are still in development; it does both the product and the customers a disservice. That said, it's got a pretty active user base already and there are some interesting posts.

If they can deliver multi-platform apps and a more complete product over the next 3-6 months, and if Mr. Trump starts posting regularly, I think Truth Social will be a contender. We'll see. If Elon Musk does indeed acquire Twitter and remake it in his image (for example, reduce the toxicity in the comments -- if such is possible), perhaps it will attract back some of the disaffected user community.

Isn't the central problem with Truth Social that it's full of trolls, and none of the people the trolls want to troll are on it? Conversely, the supreme troll of all time has pulled off another grift of his own supporters.

Anyone a Mastodon expert here? Is it even possible that the expected/desired userbase would all fit into what I understand is a single instance?

...as if there was any chance it wouldn't be a complete orgy of incompetent bungling.

It's trite, but Trump can't even operate a casino without bankrupting it, which is a unique level of utter ineptitude. He has decades of track record as 'failing upwards' (or laterally) but nonetheless failing. This is just another failure.

Disaster or not, the media has zero credibility when it comes to reporting on anything Trump related. BBC would have declared it a disaster regardless of whether or not it actually did well, just like Fox would have branded it a huge success no matter what. Only time will tell what the real situation is.

Wow, what a struggle you're having. If only there was some way to externally determine whether this is really a disastrous launch, like the BBC have quoted an NYU director as having said, or a huge success, like you've imagined fox saying.

There are 1.4million people on the waitlist to access this app. Donald Trump "is said to be furious" and has never used it to post. And it's currently said to be outside the top 100 social network apps by downloads. But I guess we'll never know whether it's really a disaster, or the imaginary Fox's huge success, because you hold the UK's national broadcaster in such low regard

Credibility isn't a thing that opinions have, is it? We each choose how to define "disaster" for ourselves.

But you seem to be ignoring the (alleged) facts supporting the opinion.

It's being reported that Trump never sent another "truth" after a short introductory one quite a while ago.

Either that's true or it isn't. If it's false, then how hard can it be to find proof?

The reporting gives them credibility, which of course could be rebutted by showing they falsified it.

I mean yeah, that's certainly a bad fact, but my whole point is that facts can be cherry picked. I would guess that there are other facts out there which would support the opinion that it is a success - for example, the other commenter said 1.4 million people were on the waitlist, which certainly indicates some marketing success in attracting millions of users.

This is my issue with the media is that they selectively report facts in order to push their agendas. This is why it seems like Fox and MSNBC are in alternate realities. Obviously, they're not just blatantly making shit up (although some outlets certainly do).

>1.4 million people were on the waitlist

This is not only cherry-picked, but fails to be sufficiently out of context to support the opposing opinion.

The key word is "were". Even if that word weren't there, the number is necessarily at a point in time.

Not to mention, what independent source verified the number?

> the media has zero credibility when it comes to reporting on anything Trump related.

That, my friend, is the absolute truth.

The media has always boosted him, never held Trump's feet to the fire about his lies, and never contextualized him. They reported his lies as credible, and it took them 4 years to be able to say "baseless". They gave him much wider latitude on what they'd report than they give to any other figure. Some of the reporters (Maggie Haberman comes to mind) had distinct conflicts of interest when it came to Trump, and yet the NYT let her report on him his entire term.

The media has zero credibility when it comes to reporting anything Trump related.

Agreed, I even remember audio of earnings reports at NBC or some other ginormous media outlet, where the CEO was basically like "he may not be good for the country, but he's good for our business".

Edit: It was CBS (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/leslie-m...).

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