Twitter? Never heard of it!
I vaguely remember once upon a time building a large following on a social media site called Twitter. I think they ended up going bust after being exposed for running bot farms to socially engineer the public and steal elections, deplatforming patriots in a political censorship racket, as well as knowingly hosting kiddie porn and human trafficking sales. Can’t remember much about them, now. Are they still around?
Anyhow, I have opened a new account on Truth Social, as they have just launched on iPhone here in the UK.
My account is: https://truthsocial.com/@martingeddes
A quick explore says there are still some technical wrinkles to sort out. At this time it’s a tentative experiment, not a commitment to make it my main social media venue. I am seeing value in having multiple audiences with different outlooks and interests. That said, we have lost one public square (Twitter is never coming back to its former prominence unless a miracle happens) and deserve another.
Our civil liberties and free speech are slowly being restored after a horrendous few years of “cancel culture”. I am already active on Gab and Anonup, and this makes a third site I plan to use. There are others out there deserving of attention and users; my choices are for my own needs, and you should not read too much into them for your situation.
There are some stiff challenges we have to overcome to regain sovereignty over our avatars. I should be able to publish an authenticated Martin Geddes identity out there, and nobody should be able to take it away from me, and everyone should be able to reference it. Truth Social is welcome as another competitor in the “better landlord” class, but really I want to be a freeholder of my virtual estate.
Brands tend to migrate towards a few major platforms, but this makes it hard for anyone new to enter the space. I cannot reference the brand (and be seen), and they cannot see me (and respond). We have been through all this before, however, with the telegraph, telephone, and texts. The end game is some kind of federation and interoperability, with decentralised control over identity and filtering.
Gab appeals to a niche, and does its job well enough. If Truth Social delivers on the “big tent” promise and keeps everyone else reasonably honest, then it will have done enough to fill the void left by the collapse of Twitter into irrelevance. If we are to have anything like a free society, we must have free speech, and Truth Social is an important vehicle to move us closer to that goal.
Read It Now
