Former US president Donald Trump's social media platform Truth Social has not yet been approved for distribution on Alphabet's Google Play Store due to insufficient content moderation, a Google representative said on Tuesday.
The delay marks a setback for the app, which launched in the Apple App Store on February 21.
Android phones comprise about 40 per cent of the US smartphone market. Without the Google and Apple stores, there is no easy way for most smartphone users to download Truth Social.
“On August 19, we notified Truth Social of several violations of standard policies in their current app submission and reiterated that 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,” Google said in a statement.
Google said it has expressed concerns to Truth Social about breaches of its Play Store policies prohibiting content such as physical threats and incitement to violence.
Truth Social parent company Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) did not respond to a Reuters request for comment, but in a press release said that it has “continuously worked in good faith with Google to ensure that the Truth Social Android App complies with Google’s policies without compromising our promise to be a haven for free speech”.
It added: “Moreover, some of our competitors’ apps are allowed in the Google Play Store despite rampantly violating Google’s prohibition on sexual content and other policies, whereas Truth Social has zero tolerance for sexually explicit content.”
News of the Android delay was first reported by Axios.
Truth Social restored Mr Trump's presence on social media more than a year after he was banned from Twitter, Facebook and Alphabet's YouTube following the January 6, 2021, US Capitol riot. He was accused by the platforms of posting messages inciting violence.
TMTG has pledged to deliver an “engaging and censorship-free experience” on Truth Social, appealing to a base that feels its views on hot-button topics such as the outcome of the 2020 presidential election have been scrubbed from mainstream tech platforms.
The President's Cake
Director: Hasan Hadi
Starring: Baneen Ahmad Nayyef, Waheed Thabet Khreibat, Sajad Mohamad Qasem
Rating: 4/5
Top tips
Create and maintain a strong bond between yourself and your child, through sensitivity, responsiveness, touch, talk and play. “The bond you have with your kids is the blueprint for the relationships they will have later on in life,” says Dr Sarah Rasmi, a psychologist.
Set a good example. Practise what you preach, so if you want to raise kind children, they need to see you being kind and hear you explaining to them what kindness is. So, “narrate your behaviour”.
Praise the positive rather than focusing on the negative. Catch them when they’re being good and acknowledge it.
Show empathy towards your child’s needs as well as your own. Take care of yourself so that you can be calm, loving and respectful, rather than angry and frustrated.
Be open to communication, goal-setting and problem-solving, says Dr Thoraiya Kanafani. “It is important to recognise that there is a fine line between positive parenting and becoming parents who overanalyse their children and provide more emotional context than what is in the child’s emotional development to understand.”
Various Artists
Habibi Funk: An Eclectic Selection Of Music From The Arab World (Habibi Funk)
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UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
PROFILE OF HALAN
Started: November 2017
Founders: Mounir Nakhla, Ahmed Mohsen and Mohamed Aboulnaga
Based: Cairo, Egypt
Sector: transport and logistics
Size: 150 employees
Investment: approximately $8 million
Investors include: Singapore’s Battery Road Digital Holdings, Egypt’s Algebra Ventures, Uber co-founder and former CTO Oscar Salazar
Farage on Muslim Brotherhood
Nigel Farage told Reform's annual conference that the party will proscribe the Muslim Brotherhood if he becomes Prime Minister.
"We will stop dangerous organisations with links to terrorism operating in our country," he said. "Quite why we've been so gutless about this – both Labour and Conservative – I don't know.
“All across the Middle East, countries have banned and proscribed the Muslim Brotherhood as a dangerous organisation. We will do the very same.”
It is 10 years since a ground-breaking report into the Muslim Brotherhood by Sir John Jenkins.
Among the former diplomat's findings was an assessment that “the use of extreme violence in the pursuit of the perfect Islamic society” has “never been institutionally disowned” by the movement.
The prime minister at the time, David Cameron, who commissioned the report, said membership or association with the Muslim Brotherhood was a "possible indicator of extremism" but it would not be banned.
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