On Tuesday, Google said that unless Truth Social, the social media site launched by former President Donald J. Trump, deleted anything that incites violence, it would not distribute Truth Social on its Play app store.
Truth Social developed an Android version of its app this year, but when Google evaluated it, the search giant claimed to have discovered user content that contained physical threats and asked Truth Social to remove the offending material before resubmitting the app for approval.
A Google spokeswoman stated, “On August 19 we alerted Truth Social of many breaches of our standards in their current app submission and repeated that having adequate procedures for regulating user-generated material is a prerequisite of our terms of service for any app to go live on Google Play.” “Truth Social responded to our criticism last week and said they’d start working on fixing the concerns we’d brought to their attention,” we wrote.
Since the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, Google has been basing a growing percentage of its content filtering judgments on whether or not they may incite actual physical violence. For this reason, its YouTube subsidiary has continued to prevent Mr. Trump from adding new content to his channel.
Trump Media & Technology Group, the firm behind Truth Social, expressed optimism about the prospect of gaining Google’s blessing for the app as soon as possible.
In a statement released on Tuesday, the firm claimed, “TMTG has continually worked in good faith with Google to ensure that the Truth Social Android app conforms with Google’s regulations without sacrificing our pledge to be a refuge for free expression.”
As previously reported by Axios, a disagreement has arisen.
Truth Social’s leader, ex-congressman Devin Nunes, recently placed the responsibility on Google, but the search giant maintained that the onus was on Truth Social to go forward and that it could choose among other solutions.
Truth Social may follow the lead of Parler, a prominent conservative social networking app, and provide an Android app that can be downloaded directly from the website, thereby avoiding Google’s content-moderation policies. If Mr. Trump’s app were available in the Galaxy Store, owners of Samsung phones wouldn’t need to wait for it to be approved by Google.
Upon its release on the Apple App Store in February, Truth Social quickly became the most downloaded app there. After finishing the iOS version, the business shifted its focus to developing an Android version. Google revealed that discussions on submitting an Android app to the Play Store started about six weeks ago. An inquiry sent to Apple was not met with an immediate response.
Earlier this month, Google said that it had assessed the app as part of its submission process. The business informed Truth Social that the app might be released on Play if it removed the information it considered offensive and provided screenshots of the offending material. Pre-orders for Truth Social may be made on the Google Play store right now.