There was a rather eye catching story this week about Meta being fined after a jury decided it had not exactly covered itself in glory over what happened on its platforms. Not a regulatory wrist slap, but an actual finding of liability, which is a slightly different kettle of fish. Real consequences, real money, and the faint suggestion that, at some point, someone might be expected to take responsibility for what is said and done under their roof.
Which does make you wonder, idly, what would happen if the same standard were applied elsewhere.
Take Truth Social, for instance. A name that sets out its stall rather boldly. Not "Possibly Accurate Social". Not "Depends What You Mean Social". No, straight in with "Truth", as if the thing had been personally blessed by a panel of philosophers, judges and disappointed schoolmasters.
Now, in law, of course, this is what they call puffery. A bit of marketing flourish. The sort of thing that allows "Best Coffee in Town" to be served lukewarm in a chipped mug without anyone summoning the authorities. No reasonable person is supposed to take it literally.
The trouble is that Donald Trump has spent so long treating facts as optional that the platform name no longer looks like branding. It looks like a joke that got out of hand. Not because everything he says is false. That would be too sweeping, and unlike him we should try to stay on speaking terms with reality. It is worse, in a way. Truth is never the standard. It is just one contestant among many, and usually not the one he backs.
That is the real problem. He does not merely get things wrong now and then, like the rest of us. He asserts things without evidence, repeats them after they have been debunked, and says the opposite later without the slightest sign that this should trouble anyone. Accuracy, in his world, is not a duty. It is a decorative extra, like chrome on an old American car.
So there is something deliciously absurd about a man with that relationship to truth presiding over something called Truth Social. It is a bit like opening a restaurant called Fresh Fish and serving Findus from the back of a freezer. Or launching a garage called Precision Engineering and attacking an engine with a lump hammer and misplaced confidence.
Legally, of course, nothing much can be done about the name. Courts are not going to sit there solemnly considering whether the word "Truth" created a binding obligation to tell it. They have enough to be getting on with. And so the law shrugs, quite reasonably, and says that branding is not a warranty.
Fair enough. But it does leave us in the faintly ridiculous position where Meta can be hammered for what happens on its platform, while Truth Social can carry on under a title that bears roughly the same relation to reality as "All You Can Eat" does after the third Yorkshire pudding.
So no, Trump does not lie every time he opens his mouth. Sometimes he says something true by accident, in the way a stopped clock manages a little moment of glory twice a day. The point is not that falsehood is literally constant. It is that truth is plainly not in charge.
And that, really, is the joke. It is called Truth Social, when "Reckless Assertion Depot" would be nearer the mark. But I suppose that did not test as well with the focus groups.
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