{"id":16152,"date":"2022-02-23T02:05:21","date_gmt":"2022-02-23T02:05:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mailinvest.blog\/index.php\/2022\/02\/23\/trumps-truth-social-crumbles-in-disastrous-launch-raising-doubts-over-long-term-viability\/"},"modified":"2022-02-23T02:05:21","modified_gmt":"2022-02-23T02:05:21","slug":"trumps-truth-social-crumbles-in-disastrous-launch-raising-doubts-over-long-term-viability","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mailinvest.blog\/index.php\/2022\/02\/23\/trumps-truth-social-crumbles-in-disastrous-launch-raising-doubts-over-long-term-viability\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump\u2019s Truth Social crumbles in disastrous launch, raising doubts over long-term viability"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Even Trump supporters made jokes about the early slog. Jenna Ellis, a former member of his legal team, posted to Instagram a photo<\/a> showing Trump with his finger hovering over a laptop, \u201cletting us on to Truth Social one at a time.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The site had been heralded for months as the crown jewel of Trump\u2019s post-presidential business ambitions, with allies pledging it would revolutionize social media and take down the mainstream social networks where Trump is banned.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But early glimpses at Truth Social suggest its offerings are almost identical to what Twitter and other sites have offered for years \u2014 except tweets are called \u201ctruths,\u201d and retweets \u201cretruths.\u201d The site\u2019s early struggles also have fueled doubts that Trump\u2019s company will be able to handle tougher long-term challenges, such as policing for dangerous content and guarding against cyberattacks.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThe basic thing they needed to actually get right, to get someone in the door, they couldn\u2019t get right,\u201d said Bill Fitzgerald, a privacy researcher. The \u201cineptitude of the rollout,\u201d he added, could be a warning of future issues ahead: \u201cThere is no better sign of a rushed implementation than the fact that you can\u2019t onboard anybody. So I\u2019m hard-pressed to understand why anyone would trust that these people would keep their information safe.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The site\u2019s problems extend beyond its waitlist: Its logo \u2014 a broken capital ‘T’ with a period \u2014 is identical to the logo of Trailar<\/a>, a British seller of truck solar panels. A company executive told The Washington Post that it is \u201cseeking legal advice to understand next steps and options available to protect our brand.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Although Trump has criticized social networks\u2019 \u201cwildly aggressive censorship,\u201d his site\u2019s \u201cterms of service<\/a>\u201d mark some extensive restrictions for acceptable speech. People are banned from trying to \u201ctrick\u201d or \u201cmislead\u201d other users, violating anyone\u2019s \u201cprivacy or publicity rights,\u201d or posting messages that \u201cdepict violence\u201d or include messages related to \u201csexual fetishes,\u201d \u201csugar babies\u201d or \u201csexually suggestive\u201d phrases. People are also forbidden from posting anything \u201cfalse,\u201d \u201cindecent,\u201d \u201cmisleading,\u201d \u201cprofane,\u201d \u201cobscene,\u201d \u201cfilthy\u201d or \u201cotherwise objectionable.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Trump\u2019s company, the Trump Media & Technology Group, also prohibits<\/a> anyone from attempting to \u201cdisparage, tarnish, or otherwise harm, in our opinion, us and\/or the Site.\u201d Truth Social has already banned<\/a> an account named for a Twitter<\/a> parody that targeted<\/a> former congressman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), who resigned from Congress to become the Trump company\u2019s CEO.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The site\u2019s terms of service also show it is designed to benefit from Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which Trump has said should be \u201ccompletely terminated\u201d because it protects tech companies from being sued for what their users post.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Truth Social\u2019s problems were evident from the start, even though the site\u2019s developers have had months to retool already-used software for the site\u2019s launch.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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On Sunday, people who\u2019d \u201cpreordered\u201d the app from Apple\u2019s App Store were sent an alert that it was available, sending it sailing to the top of the free-app download charts.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But many who tried to actually sign up to use the app faced obstacles immediately. People reported they\u2019d been given error messages or \u201cfailure to register\u201d warnings when they entered their birthday. Or they submitted their email address as requested, then never received a sign-up response.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The site was unavailable for most of its first day, Presidents\u2019 Day, and its operators reported<\/a> that \u201coverwhelming demand\u201d had triggered an outage lasting more than 13 hours. During that time, even the company\u2019s terms of service<\/a> were offline.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The developers wrote on an internal updates page Monday afternoon that they had \u201cstabilized the account creation process.\u201d But on Tuesday, many were still reporting that they were around 300,000th in line. (Some even went backward: One person reported they\u2019d gone from No. 215,406 on the waiting list Monday night to No. 295,046 by Tuesday afternoon.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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There were other signs that Truth Social\u2019s growing pains were just getting started. The app for now is available only for iPhones in the United States. On a \u2018help\u2019 page<\/a>, the site\u2019s own name is misspelled.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The Truthsocial.com<\/a> website, which allowed for early sign-ups, got about 350,000 visits last week, down from 2 million visits the week of its announcement in October, according to estimates from Similarweb, an analytics firm that tracks and estimates Web traffic. Facebook and Twitter each get hundreds of millions of visits a week.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Company representatives have not responded to requests for comment. On Sunday, CEO Nunes predicted the site would be \u201cfully operational\u201d by the end of March. Last week, he told Sebastian Gorka<\/a>, Trump\u2019s former deputy national security adviser, \u201cWe\u2019re having to build this from scratch to make sure we can\u2019t be canceled and can\u2019t be shut down.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But far from being built from scratch, the site\u2019s code shows it is based heavily on the open-source software Mastodon, which provides free, prebuilt social-networking sites that users can then edit and customize. Truth Social also depends on code from eight other outside development teams to handle text, images, security and other data, its own documentation<\/a> shows.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The glitchy debut also suggests Trump will face big challenges as he scrambles to secure his place in the online spotlight and build an alternative social media platform that can compete with similar sites, including Gab, Gettr, MeWe and Parler \u2014 the latter of which Trump\u2019s wife, Melania, said<\/a> earlier this month she would make \u201cHer Social Media Home.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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During the months of waiting, several copycat sites also beat Trump\u2019s social network to the punch, including a totally unaffiliated \u201csocial app for truth\u201d that charges users $4.99 a week. Another \u201cTruth Social\u201d look-alike showed a Trump rally photo next to boxes asking for people\u2019s email addresses and passwords.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But those sites offered something the real Truth Social could not: They worked. Even a copycat site, TMTGSocial.com<\/a>, which someone unaffiliated with Trump registered after Trump\u2019s allies first announced Truth Social in October, now has hundreds of users \u2014 posting pro-Trump content, seemingly under the impression they\u2019ve joined the real thing.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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For months, many of them have been posting comments and photos, friending each other and following fake Trump accounts<\/a>. Others have voiced their excitement that Trump is, as one said, about to \u201clet the TRUTH PREVAIL.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The site gives no indication that it\u2019s phony and has a fake Trump profile that includes the former president\u2019s birthday, photos and location (\u201cMar-a-Lago Club\u201d). When Trump\u2019s son posted<\/a> last week that his father had shared his first message on the Truth Social beta site, someone at the fake site quickly copied it<\/a>: \u201cGet Ready! Your favorite President will see you soon!\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The fake site\u2019s code shows that it uses WoWonder<\/a>, a $125 set of basic tools anyone can use to make their own social network. But the fraudulent site doesn\u2019t say who actually runs it, and questions sent to the site\u2019s leadership in recent days have yielded no response.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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One user, Stuart Fletcher, a 46-year-old unemployed house painter in England, said he\u2019d joined believing the site would be \u201ca place for honest conversations and debate without the censorship.\u201d He said Facebook had put him in \u201cFacebook jail\u201d for more than 250 days last year for breaking its \u201cmisinformation\u201d rules. On the fake site, he created a profile listing his name, birthday, current city, high school and a short biography (\u201cSeeker of Truth.\u201d) He said he\u2019s still waiting to join the real site.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n