Former President Donald Trump's new social media venture has launched, but its debut frustrated prospective new users, who flocked to Twitter to complain about signup issues.
The new platform, called Truth Social, was developed by the recently formed Trump Media & Technology Group, or TMTG. Press releases place the company in Palm Beach, Florida. Trump is the chairman of the company, and former California Rep. Devin Nunes left his congressional seat in January to become its CEO.
In December, TMTG announced that it intended to go public in a $1 billion SPAC deal with Digital World Acquisition Corp.
“$1 billion sends an important message to Big Tech that censorship and political discrimination must end. America is ready for TRUTH Social, a platform that will not discriminate on the basis of political ideology. As our balance sheet expands, TMTG will be in a stronger position to fight back against the tyranny of Big Tech," Trump said in a December press release.
It's been a little more than a year since Donald Trump was booted from Twitter, Facebook and YouTube following the attempted insurrection by his supporters on Jan. 6, 2021.
Trump and his supporters claim that Big Tech censors Republican and conservative speech, to which Truth Social is their purported antidote. But the new social media platform also serves as a way to give Trump a reliable direct line to his supporters ahead of this year's midterm elections and the looming 2024 presidential primaries, even if he can't get reinstated on mainstream social media platforms.
Here are five things to know about the new app.
- Truth Social has reportedly been downloaded 170,000 since it launched Sunday evening, according to Reuters. That was enough to rocket the app to the status of top "free app" in Apple's App Store for iOS, where it still holds first place as of Tuesday afternoon, though it doesn't show up in the top 100 free apps for iPad. However, new users shared screenshots of messages and emails showing that they had been waitlisted — something that usually only happens during a beta test period. NYT tech columnist Kara Swisher shared screenshots of the app placing her in line at #249,495 and alternately at #169,495 for entry.
- The app looks remarkably like Twitter. A screenshot shared by Republican political commentator Frank Luntz shows a profile for Donald Trump with a red checkmark that's ostensibly a mirror of Twitter's blue verification checkmark, as well as a main feed for so-called "Truths" and a tab for "Truths & Replies." There also appears to be a sharing function much like retweets, as well as threads.
- Mastodon is being used as the underlying software. Based in Germany, according to its website, Mastodon is provides open source software that allows anyone to build a decentralized social network. It supports iOS, Android, desktop and mobile web applications. The main condition for using Mastodon's API, though, is making the source code including any modifications public, which Mastodon says Truth Social did not initially do, and even claimed the code as its own intellectual property. In December, Mastodon gave Truth Social 30 days to comply with its terms or their license could be "permanently revoked."
- The app's logo might land in copyright infringement territory. A British trucking logistics company called Trailar has a remarkably similar logo of a block-like letter T with left arm cut off to form a gap. The company tweeted: "Great to see Donald Trump supporting a growing sustainability business! Maybe ask next time? @AldiUK Don't happen to have the number for your legal team on you?
- Two Bay Area companies are involved at the moment. The first, and obvious one, is Apple. Truth Social launched on Apple's App Store Sunday night, and the platform's website says that an Android version is "coming soon." The second is a San Francisco startup called Hive which provides cloud-based AI services including automated content moderation. This was likely necessary for the app to win approval from Apple to get into the App Store. Parler, another anti-Big Tech social network that launched in 2018 with funding from Republican super donor Rebekah Mercer, was kicked out of the app stores run by both Apple and Google for its role hosting the planning ahead of last year's riot at the Capitol. It has since been readmitted to Apple's store after implementing moderation policies.
