Editorial: The Truth of the matter

Just last week, he announced to the world that he has developed a new social networking app that can challenge the likes of the aforementioned majors. Baptised as Truth Social, the soon-to-be-released app promises to be a podium that will allow anyone to voice their opinions irrespective of his or her political leanings or affiliations. Training his guns at his favourite targets, including Big Tech, mainstream media (which he has often referred to as fake news) and Silicon Valley, Trump had berated the trifecta for attempting to silence voices that did not align with their woke ideology. 

Trump, who has made it his stock-in-trade to announce major policy decisions on the microblogging site Twitter, also employed it to embark upon vitriolic tirades. These were focussed on not just his political opponents, but anyone who disagreed with his ideology. Recently, he called out the manner in which Twitter was offering a platform to even contentious groups such as the Taliban but had put a blanket ban on America’s ‘favourite’ President. 

Come to think of it, Trump must be the only president in the history of the Oval Office who must have spent more time keeping his thumbs busy with self-aggrandising tweets as opposed to spending actual man-hours on statecraft, an indulgence that hasn’t gone unnoticed by the citizens of America. In December last year, it was reported that Trump had tweeted more than 25,000 times, which averages to about 18 times per day, since he took the office of the president. 

Ironically, one of the disclaimers mentioned in the fine print of the new social networking site that has been developed by the Trump Media and Technology Group, is that users may not at any point in time use the forum to disparage or tarnish the platform or its founders. So even as the app’s founder is pitching himself as a champion of all things democratic and inclusive, the very same app comes with a rider that it must be exempted from criticism of any kind. The terms of use also dictate that excessive use of capital letters will not be permitted on the platform. 

In many ways, this skewed model of democracy or free speech as demonstrated in Trump’s vision of social media is the kind of democracy that is playing out both in India and the Indian cyberspace. The ruling dispensation is known for its little to zero tolerance when it comes to the expression of viewpoints that might be perceived as dissenting or critical of the administration. It has given birth to a political milieu where journalists, comedians, advertisers, and activists can be hounded for years together on the flimsiest of premises. 

Whether Trump’s platform takes off or not is beside the point. If there is anything we have learnt from Facebook’s debacle in India, it’s how the platform completely failed to check misinformation and hate speech in the region. Across the world, news and media organisations are carrying the heavy, proverbial cross of affiliation – both to politicians and political parties. The last thing we need is yet another social media platform masquerading as a mouthpiece for inclusiveness, and least of all, platforms promoted by individuals still harbouring political ambitions.