Joining me right now is disruptive tech, research, founder and chief analyst lou bassanese lou. It’S great to see you thanks. So much for being here. Look at this chart yeah up 80. What do you make of this move and what are your expectations for truth?
Social, oh yeah, crazy, crazy times. I think i’d be crazy to buy the stock, but you got to be crazy to short it, because this is a hype driven stock. For sure i mean it’s up 10x from when this back came public and um. Just all the just the interest based upon you know, president trump having a new venue to say whatever he wants, and i really got to tell you. This is probably not going to be a popular view viewpoint, but i just think this is going to flame out.
I think you need to be on a platform that isn’t compartmentalized by conservatives or liberals or independents. You all need to be on the same platform to really have engagement and to scale, and i’m just not impressed very much by this launch. I mean the numbers right now are still very minuscule when we look at the overall landscape of social media, there’s 3.5 billion social media users, we’ve seen some other upstarts like getter and parlor, come out strong out of the gates and then just flame out, and i Think, unfortunately, no disrespect. Mr president, i think this is going to be a similar outcome here.
Well, we’ll see i mean you say compartmentalizing, but i think one of the reasons that they wanted to bring this thing forward is because you’re seeing compartmentalizing on the other side on things like twitter, where conservatives have gone, have gotten censored. Uh we’ll see. I agree with you. I agree with you on that at the end of march yeah yeah, so i agree with you right, so conservative voices have been drowned out have been overlooked on on the conventional social media platforms, but that needs to change right. The way to fix the problem is not to go outside the system.
Um look i i think, honestly, if twitter wants to disable truth, social immediately, let president trump back on the platform. It’Ll boost, engagement and it’ll make true social uh. You know true social debt. On arrival, but i do think you need you need the active dialogue between differing viewpoints. You need controversy to spur on engagement.
Now, to your point, we haven’t seen fair treatment of opposing viewpoints and that’s the big problem right now right. We have bias embedded in social media yeah, but how many? How do we scale this right, you’re not getting that on places like twitter and elsewhere, because there is so much censoring going on devin nunes is the ceo of the trump media and technology group. He joined me on sunday. Here’S what he said about truth: social watch.
This week, we’ll begin to roll out people on the apple app store. That’S going to be awesome because we’re going to get so many more people that are going to be on the platform and then look our our goal is, and i think we’re going to hit it. I think, by the by the end of march, we’re going to be fully operational uh with at least within the united states. I mean i would say you don’t really want this to be a government problem right. You want to create competition and that fixes the problem of censorship.
Do you not agree that it’s better to see more outlets out there that are trying to compete and create competition as opposed to having uh a new regulatory framework that uh, that that tells these companies? How to behave? No look we’re in perfect alignment. Philosophically i hate big government, i’m just being a realist as an analyst here and an investor saying: let’s look at what the valuation is, what is the proposition for this new company to scale, and i just don’t see it happening, there’s not going to be much international Appeal to become a viable investment that justifies a three plus billion dollar valuation. You need to have 50 million users, 100 million users get to 300 to 400.
Like you see with twitter and snap, and i just i don’t know that that’s realistic if it’s just a a platform for uncensored, conservative or more conservative voices. I think you know again. I hate to say this: we’ve been talking about big tech regulation. I’Ve been on so many times on your show talking about it for years right. Something needs to be done to open up, so that voices can be heard on the platforms that are the biggest, so competition is great.
It’S healthy! I just don’t know um that true social has a competitive edge here and a key point in this is i downloaded the app yesterday. You had nunes on here saying, like hey, we’re going to be fully scaled up and launched march 31st. I’M going to say probably not i you know the the message i got yesterday is we want you to know you’re, not just a number. We love you, but here’s your number on the wait list.
I’M 501. 325 Um, so they can’t even onboard all the users that want to get onto the platform. That’S a key problem from a business standpoint right out of the gates, and it also, it also shows the demand. But i want to get your take on on some of the policies and and really disruptive policy on on big tech. A new report from politico shows that at least 17 lawmakers tasked with overseeing and regulating big tech have children that previously or currently work for meta, amazon, google and apple among the list is senate majority leader chuck schumer, whose two daughters work for facebook and amazon.
California, congresswoman zoe, lofgren and delaware, senator chris van hollen. Do you think we’re actually going to see legislation that that keeps these companies accountable, we’re doing a big special on fox nation this week, where i was able to speak with parents and families who have serious concerns about? What’S going on on some of these platforms, i mean take the challenges for one. The challenge of you know swallowing laundry detergent, the challenge of of of dancing and jumping out of a moving vehicle so that you could dance and land on your feet. The challenge of you know getting your belt and seeing how hot how tight you can tie it around your neck.
I mean some of these. Things are absolutely outrageous and they are still there on social media, not to mention the how-to. I don’t even want to tell you the how-to’s that i found on youtube: how to i’m not going to continue? No listen. I have two teenage kids.
I don’t want them getting on there anymore either because of all these things we’ve talked about it. I mean the facebook files have shown. Social media has definitive negative effects, particularly for young women, which is just we can’t ignore. But here’s the thing right, the tangled webs that politicians weave their kids are now working for big tech, which they’re going to try and regulate. You know it’s one thing: it’s one thing to say: you’re, going to be tough on big tech and tough on crime.
But what happens when your kid is the criminal right? This is. This is a true litmus test here. Are our politicians really going to back up their tough talk? I have a hard time, believing that’s going to happen when some of their kids are actually lobbyists for big tech.
So this really comes down to. Is there ever going to be any action to moderate the content, and you know we’ve talked about this before maria facebook has always made excuses. Well, the platform’s too big. We can’t moderate the content, that’s just a bunch of malarkey right, there’s ai systems where they know that they can moderate the content. They have plenty of money to do it.
Making you know billions tens upon billions of dollars a quarter um there’s just no excuse for it anymore. It’S time for politicians to force their hand, and i just don’t know that it’s going to happen. Senator marcia blackburn senator marcia blackburn told me this weekend that she does think that her legislation is going to go up and move and come up for vote her and richard blumenthal, but we’ll see she wants to hold these companies accountable. For all of those reasons, i just mentioned lou thanks very much great to talk with you and uh checking in with you lou back to cassanese
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