Truth Trump’s Twitter

Former US President Donald Trump launched a social media platform named ‘Truth Social’ on Monday. For its first 24 hours, the app, claimed to be an alternative to Twitter, has faced technical difficulties resulting in a waiting list of hundreds of thousands.

In January 2021, Twitter banned Trump from its platform for posts the latter made in support of the deadly January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. In October 2021, the Trump Media & Technology Group and the Digital World Acquisition Corporation released a statement over the creation of its ‘Truth Social’ app.

“I created TRUTH Social and TMTG to stand up to the tyranny of Big Tech. We live in a world where the Taliban has a huge presence on Twitter, yet your favorite American President has been silenced. This is unacceptable. I am excited to send out my first TRUTH on TRUTH Social very soon. TMTG was founded with a mission to give a voice to all. I'm excited to soon begin sharing my thoughts on TRUTH Social and to fight back against Big Tech. Everyone asks me why doesn’t someone stand up to Big Tech? Well, we will be soon!” Trump said in a prepared statement at the time.

Months later, Truth Social has finally hit the app store. The run-out, however, has been far from smooth. Due to an initial crash, the website posted that many had been put on a waiting list to join the site, in numbers reportedly running into the hundreds of thousands, while others were fed error messages when trying to set up an account to enter the site.

Devin Nunes, formerly a Republican congressman representing California, left his office to become the company CEO. He said that the site was expected to be fully operational by the end of March, at the latest.

The Trump-branded social media app, however, was handicapped directly out of the gate. Additionally, the app joins an already-crowded online presence as right-leaning social media platforms have gained momentum over the past two years.

When Trump was banned from Twitter he could boast nearly 90 million followers. Twitter currently has 330 million active users.

On its first day, 170,000 people downloaded the Truth Social app. It’s unclear, however, whether anyone has been able to use it.