Truth Social, a new social media platform built by Trump Media & Technology Group, made its debut on Apple’s app store earlier this week. Its launch shows the inherent difficulty of operating a social media platform and undercuts arguments for requiring social media to host all legal speech. Although pitched as a solution to “Big Tech” censorship, Truth Social reveals that Big Tech companies are hardly monopolies and that “censorship-free” social media is not what consumers ultimately want.

Ever since former President Trump was booted from Twitter and suspended from Facebook in the wake of the Jan. 6th attack on the Capitol he has been on the hunt for a social media platform. For a while, Trump issued statements from “From the Desk of Donald J. Trump,” which closed within weeks of launch. Truth Social seems to be a more serious effort. It uses a version of Mastodon, an open-source social media service, and relies on Rumble, a liberally governed YouTube competitor, to host its videos. Nevertheless, it has run into the classic startup problem of scaling to meet demand — new users are met with a long wait list.

Much of this demand comes from conservatives dissatisfied with mainstream platforms’ content moderation. For years, conservative activists and lawmakers have voiced concerns about “Big Tech monopolies,” — a term confusingly applied to a range of companies that fiercely compete with each other across multiple markets. Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube are hardly the only venues for online speech, but explicitly conservative alternatives have struggled to provide a pleasant user experience and navigate the rules of other service providers. That Truth Social is one of the most downloaded apps on the Apple app store suggests that many consumers want alternatives to some of the most popular online speech platforms.

Truth Social describes itself as a “ ‘Big Tent’ social media platform that encourages an open, free, and honest global conversation without discriminating against political ideology.” In its form, the platform takes after Twitter — users can follow one another, post, and amplify content. Like Twitter, it is also moderated from the top down. It remains to be seen if a platform structured like Twitter, in which a small number of moderators are responsible for putting out fires across the service, can be governed more liberally.

While it might be possible to run a social media platform where only illegal speech is prohibited, it is far from clear that such a platform would be desirable — even 4chan removes off-topic speech. This is not the approach that Truth Social has taken. Like other platforms, it is governed by extensive terms of service that prohibits a range of lawful but unwanted expression. This decision makes sense. The category of “legal speech” includes speech that many people find revolting, upsetting, or inappropriate, such as lynching photos, animal cruelty videos, racist speech, and pornography. The First Amendment prohibits the government from censoring this speech, but it is not hard to see why a private company might seek to shield its users from such speech.

Truth Social prohibits “offensive or sexual content,” depictions of “violence, threats of violence or criminal activity,” and speech that is “false, inaccurate, or misleading”. Some of these prohibitions make sense for a platform seeking to appeal to a wide audience, but they are very broadly written. Like other platforms, Truth Social will find it difficult to render consistent judgements about the accuracy of user speech at scale. Not even Facebook or Twitter have tried to remove all misleading speech. The more extensive the rules, the more difficult it is to apply them without creating at least a perception of favouritism and bias. This may create problems for a platform that aims to distinguish itself through unbiased moderation.

Some of these policies may have been adopted to placate Apple. Truth Social debuted as an iOS app, rather than on Android or a website. It may be easier to offer a secure, consistent user experience on Apple’s iPhones and iPads, but it means playing by Apple’s rules. For Truth Social, the benefits of working with Apple seem to outweigh the costs, at least for the time being. Platforms born as websites, such as Reddit, have been able to create iOS friendly apps without altering their underlying platform rules. Yet it will be harder for Truth Social to liberalize after tightening the platform’s rules for Apple. If Apple bans Truth Social as it begins to tolerate more unpleasant speech, the fracas will at least direct outrage, and legislative proposals, away from edge platforms and toward internet infrastructure providers.

Some of Truth Social’s rules are clearly drawn from the experiences of similarly situated platforms. When Parler launched, trolls created accounts impersonating conservative celebrities, offending one of the platforms’ key demographics. Truth Social prohibits using its service “to impersonate another user or person”. Truth Social’s adoption of this rule illustrates why requiring social media platforms to abide by the First Amendment fails to appreciate the unique circumstances and editorial needs of different communities. Satirical impersonation and caricature is protected by the First Amendment, even when vulgar or offensive. But platforms are under no obligation to host such impersonation at the expense of their business models.

In the end, there is something for everyone in Truth Social’s launch. Conservatives fleeing “Big Tech” have another Trump-endorsed refuge. Proponents of a liberal approach to internet regulation may rest easier knowing that Trump’s business interests and a budding hub for the American right now rely on Section 230, the law that shields online platforms such as Facebook, Truth Social, and The New York Times comments section from liability for most user-generated content. To the extent that Truth Social is more liberally governed and less well-resourced than its competitors, changes to Section 230 will fall harder on it. If Truth Social can enforce its rules more fairly or with more transparency than Twitter, concerns about bias will be both vindicated and ameliorated. If it cannot, it will suggest that more liberally or individually governed social media platforms will require new forms.

We will learn more through this market discovery process than from any legislative foray or executive order. Regardless of what we learn, we should be happy to live in a society in which Trump the businessman can solve problems that Trump the President could not.