Trump's new social network needs the tech law he hates

The former president tried to kill Section 230, but it's why his TRUTH Social site can ban users who 'annoy' him

Donald Trump.
(Image credit: Illustrated | Getty Images, iStock)

TRUTH Social, former President Donald Trump's "free speech" social media platform, is set to launch on Feb. 21. Part of the popular crusade against "Big Tech tyranny," TRUTH promises to be an oasis of unrestricted political speech. But the platform's recent decision to use auto-moderation bots, as well as its oddly restrictive terms of service, suggest Team Trump has perhaps developed a newfound appreciation for both the virtue and necessity of Section 230, the law which enables platforms to choose the content they host. TRUTH Social won't realize its vision of freewheeling free speech. But it will serve as a much-needed reminder of the value of that law.

Devin Nunes, the former GOP representative-turned-Trump Media CEO, said on Wednesday that TRUTH Social will be the most "family-friendly" social media site on the market. This means it intends to moderate content that offends social conservatives even more heavily than its Big Tech rivals do. To this end, TRUTH already enlisted Hive, a Silicon Valley AI company, to auto-moderate "hate speech, spam, pornography, and bullying." This is the same technology used by Facebook and Twitter, and for good reason.

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Trevor Burrus

Trevor Burrus is a research fellow in the Cato Institute's Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies and editor‐​in‐​chief of the Cato Supreme Court Review. He holds a bachelor's in philosophy from the University of Colorado at Boulder and a J.D. from the University of Denver Sturm College of Law.