Content Moderation Strikes Again: Google Won’t Approve Truth Social Android App Over Content Moderation Concerns
Donald Trump has spent much of this week raging over on Truth Social and passing on nonsense QAnon conspiracy theory bullshit. And now it comes out that Google has so far refused to approve the Android app of Truth Social for the Google Play store, in large part over Truth Social's failure to moderate violent content on its platform. Google is noting that the problem is Truth Social's and the ball is in their court:
On Aug. 19, we notified Truth Social of several violations of standard policies in their current app submission and reiterated that having effective systems for moderating user-generated content is a condition of our terms of service for any app to go live on Google Play."
Last week Truth Social wrote back acknowledging our feedback and saying that they are working on addressing these issues."
NBC reports that Trump Media and Technology Group is pushing back on this saying that Truth Social was a vibrant, family-friendly environment." As I recall, TMTG's CEO Devin Nunes had promised early on that his site would be heavily moderated to create a family friendly environment. However, studies that have looked at how Truth Social moderates have found that it appears to be somewhat arbitrary and capricious. The site is quick to remove criticism of the former president, but not great at banning violent content.
Anyway, this is somewhat reminiscent of Parler, which was removed from the Google Play store (and elsewhere) over its weak moderation efforts.
Of course, even as some are saying that this means Truth Social cannot be accessed on Android, that's false. You can still sideload apps onto Android phones, even if they're not in Google Play (this is in contrast to Apple where things need to go through the app store).
I know that some are up in arms about this, but again, this is just kind of basic stuff. If you want to be listed on someone else's directory, you need to play by their rules. The fact that Android still allows sideloading should make this somewhat uncontroversial - but, of course, Trump's fans are flipping out, because they're nothing if they can't play victim.