Former President Donald Trump’s new social media platform, Truth Social, was originally being promoted as a “free speech” alternative to the mainstream options but is now saying that they are going for a “family-friendly” atmosphere.
In order to keep the posts that make it on to the platform “family-friendly,” the company will be using an AI model that will preemptively detect, and block, posts that include “violence, bullying, hate speech, and spam.”
Fox Business reports that the company is partnering with Hive—”a San Francisco-based Series D start-up that provides automated solutions through cloud-based artificial intelligence for understanding images, videos, and text content. Hive’s technology provides automated content moderation across video, image, text and audio.”
“We want to be very family-friendly, we want this to be a very safe place, and we are focused on making sure any illegal content is not on the site,” company CEO nad former congressman Devin Nunes said in an interview with Fox Business.
“Hive has a great track record in this, and they have been good to work with,” Nunes continued. “They are very helpful for our team and because of their experience, I think they’re helping to craft the right spot for us.”
Nunes added that they want the platform to be “the most family-friendly site.”
However, Nunes maintains that there will not be political censorship — as has been a serious problem with the mainstream platforms.
“We’re not going to censor anybody because they have a different opinion about, for example, a COVID vaccine,” Nunes said. “That is what the open internet is all about—it should be for the free flow of debate and ideas all over the globe, so that people can learn from one another and debate with one another.”
Hive co-founder and CEO Kevin Guo told the network that they will be providing “content moderation for posts to ensure sexually-explicit content, and posts that include violence, bullying, hate speech, and spam never make it to the platform.”
“TMTG really has been proactive,” Guo said. “For them, moderation has always been core. They have been very thoughtful about this.”
Hive previously worked with Parler to provide “moderation” that would allow them back into the Apple Store after the platform was banned over user posts about the January 6 protest.
The content moderation company also works with Reddit, Giphy, Yik Yak, OnlyFans, Omegle, Josh, IRL, Yubo, and Tango.
“Our stance, unlike other companies, we, by definition, are doing a net positive,” Guo said. “I don’t care who you are, if you want to make your community a safer place, you should be given the tools to do so.”
Guo explained that Hive has already been working on Truth Social for months.
“From the very beginning of product design, they have had moderation as a core concept that they’ve been building around, so, our integration with them certainly is not one they have put in last minute, or after the fact,” Guo said. “They have been very thoughtful and very proactive with this, and when they launch, moderation will be fully in place on day one.”
However, Guo says that the moderation and censorship will not be political or seek out “misinformation.”
“This is not political,” he said. “These are not things that are left or right or have any political baggage,” Guo said. “When you think about these bigger companies, what they have put in place around things like misinformation, what they deem that to be, for instance, that’s their prerogative.”
“Our moderation is based on these core concepts that, we think, are universal,” he added.
“They are not doing things like trying to censor any political talk—we don’t have models for that or models for misinformation,” he said. “We focus on a problem that is more objective.”
The platform is expected to launch by the end of the first quarter of 2022.
