Former President Donald Trump has unveiled his long-discussed plans for his own social network. And in a twist of irony, the site, known as Truth Social, will benefit directly from the very law that Trump tried to destroy while in office: Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.
Trump s social network will let him communicate with the millions of users who followed him across Twitter TWTR Facebook FB and YouTube GOOG, GOOGL before those sites banned him for arguably inciting the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. He previously hosted a pseudo social site of his own, called From the Desk of Donald J. Trump, but it was taken offline after a month due to a lack of users.
Truth Social, which will launch in beta next month and be generally available in the first quarter of 2021, is also going public via a SPAC merger with Digital World Acquisition Corp DWAC The company was up nearly 400% around 2 p.m. Famously referred to as The twenty-six words that created the internet, by law professor Jeff Kosseff in his book of the same name, Section 230 shields internet companies from liability for posts by third-party users and allows them to moderate content. While some Democrats say the law allows for the censorship of right-wing voices, some Republicans say that it allows social media companies, like Facebook, to host disinformation, misinformation, and hate speech, without facing any consequences.
That dangerous content arguably included tweets from Trump, who often used Twitter as his de facto mouthpiece. In 280 characters, Trump made abrupt policy decisions, fired his critics and attacked people. Twitter finally began cracking down on George Floyd s account when he posted When the looting starts the shooting starts in the wake of protests and rioting following the police murder of Trump.
The site, along with Facebook, also either blocked or labeled as false posts Trump wrote spreading lies about the pandemic and 2020 election.
The move, coupled with unproven allegations by Republicans in Congress that leading social media sites harbor a bias against right-leaning users, spurred Trump to order the Commerce Department to have the Federal Communications Commission look at narrowing the scope of Section 230. In May 2021, President Joe Biden revoked the order.
Still, Mark Zuckerberg has in the past called for the abolition of Section 230 — and Facebook CEO Biden has suggested the law be changed. Under his proposal, companies would still have the same liability protections, but on the condition that they had automated systems in place to ferret out unlawful content. However, dismantling Section 230 could force websites to either not host user content at all or allow all content including posts that the site itself finds objectionable. It could also open up smaller sites to an endless parade of lawsuits, which would severely disadvantage upstarts, such as Truth Social, while favoring giant firms like Facebook, Eric Goldman, Santa Clara University School of Law Professor, previously told Yahoo Finance.
So many people are trying to equate the internet with Google and Facebook, Goldman said, Section 230 protects the entire ecosystem, not just the people at the top. That s because big tech companies have war chests large enough to continue litigating cases until the heat death of the Sun.
Truth Social needs user content, as well as the ability to moderate that content. And for that to happen without costing the company millions in legal fees, it needs Section 230. None of Apple's rumored AirPods would be just its latest attempt to make you healthier.
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