Trump’s Truth Social Barred from Google Play Store | Hacker News Reader

Trump’s Truth Social Barred from Google Play Store

cnbc.com

35 pointsSV_BubbleTime45 comments

> Google says that the app violates the Play store’s standards for content moderation, according to Axios.

Wonder what Google has to say about Twitter's child porn problem?

> Twitter could not safely allow adult creators to sell subscriptions because the company was not — and still is not — effectively policing harmful sexual content on the platform.

[1] https://nypost.com/2021/01/21/twitter-sued-for-allegedly-ref...

[2] https://www.theverge.com/23327809/twitter-onlyfans-child-sex...

Please stop the whataboutism. The devil doesn't need an advocate. Go home.

I don’t consider it whataboutism, I think that many social media companies are clearly in literal violation of googles policies and thus citing policy to shut down truth social gets an “okay bro” reaction.

The moderation is clearly totally arbitrary in where it draws the line regardless of if truth social is or is not worse than other social media platforms. Google is effectively making this up as they go.

The distinction might be: are they at least trying and putting a reasonable investment into moderation, or do they not care / have no plausible plan.

Disclaimer: I have to idea what degree of content moderation Truth Social currently has... but it certainly wouldn't shock me if they have no viable plan or aren't bothering to try very hard.

It is objectively whataboutism, and welcome to the real world.

People pointing out rules that have gone unenforced being enforced the moment somebody unpopular comes along is not whataboutism. The point of the argument isn't admonishing the behaviour of others to cover for your own, which is the point of the whataboutism argument. Whataboutism requires you to avoid the critical question or argument, that is not the case here, the critical question is the interpretation of the moderation policy.

It is essential to discuss how policy has been enforced in the past in a discussion about the fairness of a policies enforcement. It would be very obnoxious if every time somebody cited a similar case to the current enforcement action they were accused of whataboutism and told to live in the real world.

Why can't they make a web app?

I think what google is doing is in a sense an unfair application of market power and is anticompetitive, but on the other hand, I don't really see what specifically Truth Social would miss out on if they just deployed as a web app and circumvented any tech company gatekeeping

On Android, they could technically also just ask users to side load it. It’s fairly trivial to do.

That said…there’s definitely going to be a lot of scam apks because the demographic would be ripe for conning.

PWAs on Android seem to have restricted push notification access (for me they always show up under silent notifications from my browser), and things get a bit mixed up when your browser has multiple push notifications authorized.

Asking the target userbase to install a progressive web app is not very attractive given the name. Might as well call it "Demoncrat" web apps as far as Truth Socials users are concerned.

"I don't really see what specifically Truth Social would miss out on"

Virtually all accessible users. Your average consumer is not tech savvy.

They have a very good PWA already

They have a website.

No antitrust implications there, not at all. They fairly offer their services to all who agree with their politics.

Remember Parler? How is that not an antitrust lawsuit to the amount of Facebook or Twitters highest valuation? "We coulda been this big had the established competition allowed us to compete"

I wish Google cared as much about customer service as they do about 'moderating user-generated content'.

Microsoft faced antitrust legislation for bundling a free browser with their OS, but Google and Apple are allowed to dictate content moderation policies for apps on their OS?

This is disgusting.

Maybe if it was Twitter that was running the Android app store, but it seems to me that this situation is not so clear cut. How is this an anticompetitive action?

Google competes for user's attention and advertising dollars. It seems pretty straightforward to say that prohibiting competitors from operating is an anticompetitive action.

It’s a tricky situation. I think it’s appropriate for the government to intervene if Google bans a competitor’s app for anti-competitive reasons. But I also think Google should not be forced to facilitate distribution of content on its property that it believes to be harmful simply because that distribution is being done by a competitor.

I think you would have to demonstrate that they were promoting apps that integrated with Google ad vending over those that don't, then. I'm just trying to visualize the legal argument.

When you are Google, I think you should be held to a ”no, you can’t create the world as you see fit” binder. Because at this size “a competitor” isn’t really a thing.

Historically maybe 3 broadcasters opinions on morality in the US dictated what everybody in the entire country heard for quite a few years.

Perhaps another corporate tax cut will show them the error of their ways.

clearly they’re also violating the apple TOS, no? both platforms are somewhat similar in what they allow/reject.

> clearly they’re also violating the apple TOS, no?

Google's decision certainly gives Apple some PR ground cover if they decide to ban it as well. However, Apple may not want to do that at this time.

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/08/26/justice-department-...

Also: If Apple bans Truth Social for "lacking effective systems for moderating user-generated content", one has to ask whether Twitter is any better in this regard. You can't be a person in the public eye on Twitter without regularly receiving hate speech, death threats, etc. either.

Didn't they remove Tumblr for this very reason at one point?

I don't think so. I think Google, Twitter, and friends don't like Trump, so they go out of their way to ban him.

I don't think they're wrong to dislike Trump, but I think the treatment has the opposite of the desired effect: banning Trump simply validates what he tells his supporters. There are more nuanced tools which big tech could use; this feels a bit blunt.

That's a misconception - there's a clear right-wing, pro-trump bias on all large social media platforms, consistently for years, and it's by design: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/feb/01/facebook-youtu...

I tried signing up on Truth Social just now to check it out.

They ask for your phone number but only make provision for +1 and +44.

What is a good way to get a +1 number that protects my privacy?

They only allow “real” phone numbers. No VOIP!

What qualifies though? Are US Cellular, Inland Wireless, Viaero, Verizon and such whitelisted? If so, which of their operating carrier numbers are whitelisted? Or are they doing this the ghetto fabulous way by NPA-NXX carrier allocation without checking the current underlying LEC?

More than one of the carriers I listed will sell you SIP trunking and texting on their wireless OCN, breaking most schemes of this type. Registering on a wireless number and immediately moving it to wireline or VoIP is another major threat to this model.

I can't blame them if I had a service I would do the same.

Are you really going to check the LRN for each user's number every day?

If not, restricting to wireless only is pointless. Bandwidth.com will happily port in and out phone numbers from wireless carriers in minutes, you could easily have a wireless number flip and flop between a CLECs OCN and a PCS or wireless OCN multiple times an hour.

jmp.chat?

Just don't bother with this 'social network'. How about that?

Funny how the 'truth' is blocked outside the US. All I am getting is: "At the moment, Truth Social is available for U.S. users only, but rest assured, we are working hard to make it available in your country. When Truth Social becomes available for you, we'll make an announcement. Stay tuned! Access denied You cannot access truthsocial.com. Refresh the page or contact the site owner to request access."

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/03/05/truth-soci...

I’m just super curious to read what people discuss on there. Even Twitter can be browsed without signing in. Gab similarly.

You can browse individual users' messages easily enough, eg truthsocial.com/@username_here

https://crypton.sh/ sells real mobile numbers (not VoIP) purchasable anonymously with crypto.

Google/Apple shouldn't be trusted as a global censor. Each app store are dominant platform.

Just go build your own as long as it's exactly the same as all the rest. "Freedom"...

Just go build your own duopoly of app stores next?

My comment was sarcasm, if that wasn't obvious.

Mine too, apparently it wasn’t.

A thing that strikes me is that technology is so accessible and cheap now that relying on friction and cost of entry to deter right wing collectives online is not proving effective.

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