For all of their performative outrage about “cancel culture,” most conservatives are indeed aware that deplatforming does not violate the First Amendment. If you own a TV network or a social-media site, you have every right to decide who has a voice & what they’re allowed to say.
So it certainly makes sense that Donald Trump would want to create a social media platform where he & his acolytes are free to propagate their ridiculous conspiracy theories in peace.
But Trump’s new Truth Social platform is already destined for problems: a beta version looks so similar to Twitter that legal blowback appears inevitable. There are also rumors of a weekly user fee, which would sink any social media site faster than mere indifference ever could.
Ultimately the ideal of a conservative social media site (CSMS) that would draw the MAGA accounts away from Twitter sounds like a win-win for both sides. But it’s worth exploring what success might look like, even hypothetically.
There’s no way they’re going to put Twitter out of business. What I see as a best-case scenario for a CSMS would be to serve as the equivalent of a Fox News, running in parallel with Twitter with its own unabashedly pro-Trump alternate reality.
And just as CNN’s non-agenda-driven reporting became the “liberal” choice by default, Twitter would be considered the “liberal” alternative to regular users of the CSMS.
(The MAGAts already use “blue checkmark” as a derogatory synonym for “liberal”, despite the fact that many of them have blue checkmarks by their names as well. Mind you, their glossary of Derogatory Synonyms for Liberals is likely as expansive as the Eskimos’ synonyms for snow.)
If a conservative social media site became a truly sustainable echo chamber of pro-Trump voices, its contents might be used to fuel stories on sympathetic news outlets, much like Twitter & Facebook generates content for mainstream news today.
So CNN & MSNBC would quote Twitter, and Fox News & OANN would quote the CSMS. Blue checkmarks on one side, red checkmarks on the other. Our information bubbles would be driven even further apart from each other than they already are.
But I do not believe this is a likely scenario, & that has mostly to do with the differences between cable news and social media.
If the Right tries to have it both ways – staying on Twitter while also using the CSMS – it’s probably not going to work. They’ll get another Parler.
If the Right tries to have it both ways – staying on Twitter while also using the CSMS – it’s probably not going to work. They’ll get another Parler.
But they’ll never have the will power to abandon us completely. Conservatives are all about “owning the libs”, usually in the guise of bad-faith debate. It seems unlikely that they’d be happy for very long in their own world without getting in our faces.
Make no mistake: They want the mainstream discourse to focus on THEM and THEIR issues, and they can’t do that if we’re all ignoring them.
All of the famous people are on Twitter right now… how many are seriously going to abandon it for the CSMS if such a thing ever got off the ground?
And what’s the point of unrestricted free speech if nobody cares what you have to say?
And what’s the point of unrestricted free speech if nobody cares what you have to say?
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