The real story here is this: Anyone who purports to have a private platform that enshrines unconditional free speech is a false prophet. This story usually ends in the operators of said platform discovering that content moderation is both hard and, to some degree, necessary.

Last year, former Trump aide Jason Miller launched Gettr, a self-proclaimed free-speech platform that sought to upend “big tech oligarchs [who] try to dominate and control what people think.” However, Gettr quickly began moderating content and deleting user accounts when it began to resemble seedier sites like 4Chan (not exactly a paragon of conservative virtue). Gettr also failed to get Donald Trump to join…

The lesson for Truth Social is that the Trump-populist vision of “free speech” is incompatible with business success. Ironically, it’s also increasingly inconsistent with the First Amendment itself—not to mention traditional conservative ethics of free enterprise and regulatory humility. Perhaps today’s Trumpian conservatives seek a doctrine of “free speech” that is increasingly unfused from the Constitution’s original meaning (an understanding one might call “progressive.”) For supporters of the modern right’s “free speech” crusade, the fates of Truth Social, Gettr, Gab, and Parler are hardly grounds for optimism. Fiery tweets about Big Tech “overlords” will sustain populist anger for the time being. But in both the regulatory and business spaces, conservatives will need to do some serious soul-searching if their backlash against Big Tech is to carry any real meaning.