The TOS for Truth Social is up, and it has a curious entry that can lead to some
- PROHIBITED ACTIVITIES
You may not access or use the Site for any purpose other than that for which we make the Site available. The Site may not be used in connection with any commercial endeavors except those that are specifically endorsed or approved by us.
As a user of the Site, you agree not to:
…
4. use the Site to advertise or offer to sell goods and services.
I find this interesting because that is the direction where most social media is going - allowing people to sell goods and services and taking a “cut”. That’s how Craigslist became a household name. It’s where Mark Zuckerberg wants to take Facebook - the place where everything is bought our sold. It’s also were Yahoo started and Google took over to become the Global Powerhouse it is now - helping billions of people find stuff for sale and skimming a bit off the top. Youtube is another example that grew by encouraging anyone and everyone to publish content and then drawing revenue from advertising on that content.
Such a policy by TS also will, I think, discourage all the masses of lower tier social media influencers, and even the middle tier. It looks like TS wants to negotiate personally with only the top tier in media influencers, and counting on them to draw in the crowds. There isn’t any motive for lower or mid tier influencers to join that I can see, except to participate in endless looping discussions where nobody will agree on anything unless they already agreed before the conversation started, lol.
In general, the “open forum” is a drain on a company’s resources. On Integral Life, I’d question how much the cost / benefit ratio is to generating revenue and I only assume that generating revenue is intentionally taking a back seat to a more integral mission.
I wonder if TS plans to generate revenue by using ads, as was common in the 1990’s model of web design? Placing ads on a website as a means of generating revenue is pretty ineffective now - which is why you don’t see big banner ads or on the most successful media platforms - just the trashy ones. People develop what’s called “banner blindness” and our brain can just block out messages in predictable locations. In a forum such as Truth Social hopes to be, the cost of administering the forum I predict will be far more than the revenues generated by the ads.