I like the idea of transparency that explains the moderation rules of privately owned platforms*. However, regulating them as a town square makes no legal sense. Truth Social clearly demonstrates that alternatives can be built and that users are interested. It also clearly demonstrates that its failure was from awful execution of their product and services. Regardless of your opinion of Truth Social, from a technical point-of-view it was poorly built and its features poorly implemented. Lawmakers would have a better argument if Truth Social was a well designed product with interested users that could not join because they were tightly tied to other platforms. The market has yet to show that alternatives are impossible and therefore town square comparisons have no weight.

If you want an alternative platform build one that can compete. There's nothing stopping you other than skill and business acumen.

* This has its own issues if the site's moderation includes machine learning. That's unrelated to the Texas law, though.

When Yahoo and Google started giving click-thru data for advertising, as opposed to page impressions, advertisers were shocked that viewers ignored most of their ads. When Tivo starting giving viewing statistics to the networks they were shocked at how ineffective their ads were. Are newspapers only now learning that there's a huge difference between seeing a headline (an ad) and actually paying attention to it? Seriously?

A larger problem is the changing definition of "journalist". A lot of people (and almost everyone on /.) would agree that journalists have a right to protect their sources in the name of journalistic independence and integrity. But who exactly is a journalist? You're average blogger? A prominent commentator?

Recently the Government Accountibility Office (GAO) has started hearings into "newspeople" who were surreptitiously paid to promote government proposals. Armstrong Williams promoting the No Child Left Behind act and Maggie Gallagher for the Health and Marriage Initiative are two prominent examples. Williams claims he's a commentator and not a journalist, while Gallagher says she is a journalist but that she did not have a conflict of interest. And what about bloggers who do their own reporting? Many do not have any journalistic training and do not know (or care to know) the rules that guide reporters.

Traditionally, the law has differentiated the 1st Amendment needs of journalists and the average person because of the importance of journalistic independence. If you're reporting on trade secrets, how to your prove you're a real journalist and not some schmuck with an axe to grind?