The long-expected announcement finally came on Wednesday: Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) unveiled its plan to “create a rival to the liberal media consortium and fight back against the ‘Big Tech’ companies of Silicon Valley, which have used their unilateral power to silence opposing voices in America.” TMTG’s TRUTH Social plans a beta launch next month, followed by a nationwide rollout early next year.
Former President Trump, who is described in the press release as the Chairman of TMTG, commented:
I created TRUTH Social and TMTG to stand up to the tyranny of Big Tech. We live in a world where the Taliban has a huge presence on Twitter, yet your favorite American President has been silenced. This is unacceptable. I am excited to send out my first TRUTH on TRUTH Social very soon. TMTG was founded with a mission to give a voice to all. I’m excited to soon be sharing my thoughts on TRUTH Social and to fight back against Big Tech. Everyone asks me why someone doesn’t stand up to Big Tech? Well, we will be soon!
TRUTH Social’s nascent website states: “TRUTH Social is America’s ‘Big Tent’ social media platform that encourages an open, free, and honest global conversation without discriminating against political ideology.”
Wait, there’s more than just a social media platform: “Additionally, TMTG intends to launch a subscription video-on-demand service (TMTG+). TMTG+ will feature ‘non-woke’ entertainment programming, news, podcasts, and more.”
The TMTG site, which proclaims “Trump Media & Technology Group: A Uniting Force For Freedom of Expression/No Political Discrimination/Canceling Cancel Culture/Standing Up to Big Tech,” explains:
In the year 2021, the media pendulum has swung dangerously far to the left. Silicon Valley, the mainstream media, and Big Tech have begun to forcibly silence voices that do not align with their woke ideology. Big Tech platforms demonetize, throttle, and cancel those who stray from the mainstream narrative. They are not just censoring content – they are determining what can and cannot be said. By controlling how information is shared, they control the narrative. They control the future. They control you. To counter this dangerous exercise of Big Tech monopoly power, President Donald J. Trump and TMTG are building a media and technology company rooted in social media, digital streaming, and more. TMTG intends to even the playing field by providing people with open media platforms where they can share and create content without fear of reputational ruin. Join us.
Given the social media giants’ increasing taste for authoritarianism and its silencing of voices that dissent from the Leftist agenda, including even the mildest questioning of the propriety of the 2020 election or the effectiveness of the COVID vaccines, a new social media platform is urgently needed. But the new social media platform must do more than just exist as an alternative to Twitter and the rest: it has to become widely popular, popular enough to bring about the drastic weakening of the power and influence of the social media giants that are so arrogantly exercising control over the American public discourse today.
Related: Social Media and the Police: Are Your Freedom and Privacy Threatened?
Will Trump’s new social media platform become that popular force? Or will it become just another ghettoized site for dissidents, who have several to choose from already? American society is already deeply divided, and this Trump initiative could end up simply widening the divide by further stratifying the public discourse. On the other hand, Trump has a stature that no one associated with Gettr, Parler, or Gab could possibly have; if he can manage to replicate what is good about Twitter, he could draw millions of people away from that platform, including even some who are not his followers and admirers.
The prospect of the collapse of the unrestrained power of Twitter, Facebook, and the rest should move everyone, even those who aren’t fans of the 45th president, to root for this project to succeed. So far, action against Big Tech has been stymied by the fact that, despite wielding more power over the public square than any totalitarian regime ever enjoyed, they are private companies, and many maintain that government interference in their operations would ultimately prove more harmful than their censorship itself. Whatever may be the merits (or lack thereof) of such arguments, Trump has now cut through them by forming a new private company that has a real chance to challenge the sinister self-appointed arbiters of what is and is not acceptable discourse. A great deal more is riding on his success than just the money he is sinking into this venture.
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