Donald Trump ‘s social media platform Truth Social has launched, on a limited basis, in the Apple App Store in the US. The application has great similarities with Twitter, as those who have already tried it have described. This initiative has been in the making since the tycoon was banned from Twitter, Facebook and YouTube last year.
The leader of the project and former Republican congressman, Devin Nunes, has assured that it was expected to be fully operational by the end of March, but it seems that it will have to wait a little longer, since the avalanche of registration requests is causing problems with the servers that, at the moment, are not being able to manage all the requests.
Trouble registering due to high demand
Some of those who tried to register received the following message: “Due to the massive demand, we have placed you on our waiting list.” Created by the Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) in 2021, Truth Social had previously been made available to around 500 users to start beta testing.
Last week, Donald Trump Jr shared a screenshot of his father’s first “truth” (just as on Twitter messages are tweets, on Truth social they will be truths) on the social network: “Get ready. Your favorite president will see you early”.
Truth Social has already had an update for “bug fixes”, according to the App Store, and is now at version 1.0.1. Twitter vetoed the former president’s account after the US Capitol riots on January 6, 2021, saying he had violated its rules on justifying violence and hate speech.
An ‘outsider’ social network, like Trump himself
On its website, Truth Social describes itself as a “broadcast social media platform that fosters open, free, and honest global conversation without discriminating against any political ideology.” Trump wants Truth Social to defend “free speech” and prevent “censorship” from sites like Twitter and Facebook.
It is a common view among conservatives that Silicon Valley social media companies are restricting free speech by removing posts and users. Former congressman Nunes has asked on multiple occasions that people avoid using the applications of large technology companies since, according to him, they censor content and do not allow them to express themselves freely.
For most tech and social media pundits, however, Trump’s experiment isn’t going to be as successful as he thinks. Despite the fact that there may now be many people wanting to be able to download the final version of the application, staying up to date is a very complicated task.
Companies like Twitter have had years to develop their platforms and build their audiences, but Truth Social is brand new, it came out of nowhere, and getting established is tremendously difficult in an overexploited market like social media.
