Truth Social, a social media platform created by former US President Donald Trump, has been removed from Google Play, a well-known online app store, due to concerns about content moderation.
According to Google, the platform is in violation of its rules against posting anything that makes physical threats or incites violence.
“On August 19, we notified Truth Social of several violations of standard policies,” the Google management claims.
“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,” they added.
Google says it has offered Truth Social advice on how to fix the problems. but Truth Social did not respond to the BBC’s request for comment.
Truth Social is often described as a “free speech” platform.
However, for the app to be downloadable on the vast majority of the world’s phones it needs to be approved by Apple and Google.
Far from Truth Social being a place of unfettered free speech, the platform in fact has many rules on what you can and cannot say, according to numerous reports.
In fact, Truth Social has a long list, in its Terms of Service, of things that can and cannot be posted.
Critics have also argued that Truth Social has a problem with disinformation and hate speech.
Recall that last year, Donald Trump announced he was planning to launch a revolutionary technology company.
“I created Truth Social… to stand up to the tyranny of big tech,” he said.
“We live in a world where the Taliban has a huge presence on Twitter yet your favourite American president has been silenced.”
The app launched on Presidents’ Day, 21 February, but six weeks later is beset by problems. A waiting list of nearly 1.5 million is unable to use it.
You will also note that Truth Social looks a lot like Twitter, which banned Mr Trump from posting on the platform after a mob of his supporters attacked the Capitol on 6 January 2021.
Twitter contended that Donald Trump, by making false claims the presidential election had been “stolen”, had incited violence. He was banned for life on 8 January, 2021.