Looking to found a new social media venue after being banned from nearly every mainstream platform, former US President Donald Trump has explored hosting it with several tech firms, including FreeSpace, according to a report by Axios.
Citing “sources familiar with the private discussions,” Axios reported Wednesday that Trump has “more meetings this week” with other tech companies, but was looking intently at FreeSpace, which his tech adviser, Dan Scavino, also reportedly likes.
FreeSpace is a newly formed social media company that bills itself as a networking platform for “free-thinkers, athletes and entrepreneurs.” Axios noted that its app was only launched on the Apple and Google stores last month ,and has just 20,000 downloads. It has many of the same features as most social media platforms, including interactable profiles and private groups and messaging functions.
Before Trump’s account was suspended by Twitter in January, he had some 88 million followers. The social media giant shut down his account in the aftermath of the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol by his followers, which was widely accused of having egged on, although a Senate trial acquitted him of that charge. His accounts were similarly disabled on Facebook and Instagram. The app Parler, which some of the organized participants in the riot reportedly used to coordinate their actions, was disabled in its entirety for a time before eventually being restored.
On Sunday, chief Trump adviser and former spokesperson Jason Miller told Fox News that Trump would likely return to social media with his own platform “in probably about two or three months.”
“There have been a lot of high-powered meetings he’s been having at Mar-a-Lago with some teams of folks who’ve been coming in. It’s not just one company that’s approached the president. There have been numerous companies,” Miller added. “But I think the president does know what direction that he wants to head here. This platform is going to be big, and everyone wants him. He’s going to bring millions and millions – tens of millions of people to this new platform.”
Earlier on Wednesday, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), a democratic socialist who faced no shortage of vitriol from Trump, told New York Times columnist Ezra Klein that he didn’t “feel comfortable” at the time of Trump’s social media ban with such a powerful figure being muzzled by “a handful of high-tech people.”
