Donald Trump’s social media app Truth Social debuts today in rocky start

Former President Donald Trump’s social media app was made available today in the App Store, although it seems it got off to a rocky start.

Truth Social has been in the pipeline for some time now, ever since Trump was kicked off Twitter Inc. and Facebook Inc. for repeated violations of policy. His Twitter account alone had something like 88 million followers, so it is no surprise that Trump came up with his own platform on which his thoughts can be amplified.

Not long after his social media accounts were removed, Trump doubled down on his contention that such companies held a bias against more conservative people and conservative media. In July last year, he went as far as starting a lawsuit against Facebook, Twitter and Google LLC-owned YouTube for what he said was “social media companies’ illegal, shameful censorship of the American people.” he called the suit a “pivotal battle in the defense of the first amendment.”

His new app states that it is, “America’s ‘Big Tent’ social media platform that encourages an open, free, and honest global conversation without discriminating against political ideology.” In the App Store preview, the site says it wants to be open to all users, including a “proud libertarian”,  a “staunch conservative”, and a “die-hard liberal.”

It seems some of the first people to try and sign up met with problems, receiving error messages when they inputted certain information. That might have now been rectified, although perhaps due to such high numbers trying to sign up some people have been put on a waiting list as some bugs are being fixed.

According to Devin Nunes, a former Republican congressman who heads the Trump Media & Technology Group, the app is still not fully functional and won’t be for a while. “Our goal is, I think we’re going to hit it, I think by the end of March we’re going to be fully operational at least within the United States,” he said in a statement to the media.

As for what it looks like, early users have said that it’s not very different from Twitter, which is not surprising given Trump’s past activity on that site and the likelihood of him feeling pretty upset at it now. Still, although it climbed to first place in the App Store, it seems not much is happening there at the moment.

This is just the latest alternative social media site that avouches to embrace a freer kind of speech. The site Gettr, made by former Trump adviser Jason Miller, now has around 4 million users per month. The platform Gab has around 100,000 monthly active users and Parler between 700,000 and one million monthly active users.

Photo: Gage Skidmore/Flickr