This past weekend, President Donald Trump’s social media competitor to Twitter — called Truth Social — finally went public. The app proclaims itself to be “America’s ‘Big Tent’ social media platform that encourages an open, free, and honest global conversation without discriminating against political ideology.”
The glitchy launch of the social media app saw hundreds of thousands of people added to waitlists to get their accounts set up.
Will it be more successful than other social media apps aimed at people who no longer feel at home on mainstream social media apps like Facebook or Twitter?
Maybe, maybe not. But that’s not necessarily the important thing.
The lesson here is a simple but important one.
While many complain about the increasingly censorious tendencies of social media companies, which rose to prominence precisely because they provided open platforms for virtually anyone to use, there has always been the option for people to launch competitive services to serve consumers no longer satisfied with existing providers.
It’s been a little over a year since President Donald Trump was banned from Twitter. He in turn responded by filing a silly lawsuit against Twitter, Facebook and Google.
However, as Twitter recently argued in court, Trump “agreed to abide by Twitter’s rules, and yet proceeded to repeatedly violate those rules,” which culminated in his removal from Twitter.
It’s really as simple as that. Private businesses are, for the most part, free to set their own rules, their own terms and conditions. There is no constitutional right to tweet on Twitter.
Even Truth Social has its own rules. Former congressman Devin Nunes, who is now CEO of the company behind Truth Social, told Fox Business last month: “We want to be very family-friendly, we want this to be a very safe place, and we are focused on making sure any illegal content is not on the site.”
The launching of Truth Social is the much more sensible alternative. If Trump and others can’t use Twitter, perhaps Truth Social is the answer that will satisfy their need to broadcast their thoughts.
Of course, this effort may or may not be any more successful than Gab or Parler, social media platforms that similarly sought to serve as alternatives to the dominant social media companies.
But that’s how the free market works.
Success is not guaranteed. Results may vary. Expectations and intentions of entrepreneurs don’t necessarily translate into real-world outcomes.
What matters is that individuals are free to provide market alternatives and consumers are allowed to have a variety of choices.
That’s how capitalism works, how societies become prosperous, how the internet blossomed, how social media giants emerge (and fall).
Rather than rely on litigiousness or legislation, critics of the dominant social media companies should pursue their own ventures and fill voids left by the status quo.