Truth Social

Truth Social is a social media platform launched in April 2022 by a company formed through a merger of the Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG) and special acquisition company (SPAC) Digital Word Acquisition Corp. The network planned a beta launch in November 2021 and a full launch in the first quarter of 2022.

Structured similarly to Twitter, users can post "Truths," which are like tweets, or "Re-Truths," which are retweets. The app contains a news feed, referred to as the "Truth Feed," which shows users who interacted with their posts.

On the 20th of October 2021, The 45th president of the United States of America, Donald Trump, announced the potential launch of a social media application called Truth Social or TRUTH Social. The app then became available for pre-order on the App Store. The social media platform was set to be developed through a company formed by a merger of the Trump Media and Technology Group and Digital World Acquisition. Truth Social was set for a beta launch in November 2021 and a full rollout in the first quarter of 2022.

Hours after Trump made the announcement, an individual claiming affiliation with the hacking collective Anonymous used Shodan—a search engine capable of locating servers exposed to the open internet—to track the company’s digital footprint. Shodan was used to locate and leak on social media a web domain that appeared to be operating the mobile beta for Truth Social, enabling unpermitted users to sign up and utilize the platform.

Users trolled the site, created parody accounts, and posted comedic content in the form of memes. Fake accounts were created with usernames of public figures including Trump, Mike Pence, and Jack Dorsey. Following this, new accounts were barred and the site was pulled offline.

Truth Social is the first of three stages in the plans of the company formed through a merger between Trump Media and Technology Group and Digital World Acquisition. The platform is set to be followed by a subscription video-on-demand service termed TMTG+ that will feature entertainment, news, and podcasts.

In May 2021, Trump launched a blog called From the Desk of Donald J. Trump, which he used to post short announcements in the form of tweets. The site was shut down in less than a month. Following the attack on the US Capitol by Trump supporters on January 6, 2021, Trump was banned from Twitter, Facebook, Twitch, Snapchat, Shopify, and Instagram. Youtube, Discord, Pinterest, Reddit, and Tik Tok put plans in place to limit his reach, and Google and Apple suspended the app Parler, which had been used by violent supporters of Trump.

The terms of service appear to lean on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which shields digital platforms from lawsuits over content posted by their users. The Communications Decency Act was criticized by Trump during his presidency. The terms add that TRUTH Social can terminate or suspend a user's account and also sue themThe twenty-third term in the site's terms of service states that users are not allowed to "disparage, tarnish, or otherwise harm, in our opinion, us and/or the site."The twentieth term also prohibits the "excessive use of capital letters," a term that users pointed out was already violated by Trump on Twitter.

Truth Social has faced a variety of technical issues, one of them being a waiting list obstructing hundreds of thousands of prospective users in its first weeks online. On April 4, 2022, Josh Adams and Billy Boozer, TruthSocial's chief of technology and chief of product development respectively, left the company. They resigned following an attempt by former US congressman and Trump Media & Technology Group CEO, Devin Nunes, to bring in personal allies to operate the company.

On the day of its launch, Truth Social was downloaded about 200,000 times, and the downloads reduced to about 10,000 installs a day in March 2022. Following the February 21st launch, the app has been installed about 1.2 million times. The contents of the app are only viewable from an Apple iPhone, and there has been no Android version available for download. Links to individual posts, referred to as “truths,” cannot be opened in standard web browsers. In March 2022, the app’s developers reported that, as a result of database memory problems, users were “experiencing slow distribution of truths.”

The social network is reported to be going unused by former President Trump, who is only followed by about 140,000 people, which is a fraction of the estimated 90 million followers he had on Twitter before the ban following the 2021 US Capitol riot. Additionally, Digital Word Acquisition Corp, which is the special acquisitions vehicle (SPAC) bringing the platform to the public, is being investigated by the SEC.

In April 2022, shares of the Digital World Acquisition Corporation, a blank-check firm planning to merge with Trump's Media & Technology Group, went down 13 percent and closed at $35.71. This was the lowest since the deal was publicized in October 2021. The selloff comes as Elon Musk closes a deal for the take over of Twitter, the Big Tech company that Trump accuses of silencing conservatives and is an inspiration for Truth Social. At a point, the stock fell as much as 19 percent.

Elon Musk, who reached a deal in April 2022 to buy Twitter for $44 billion, says his objective is to make Twitter “an inclusive arena for free speech.” Trump informed Fox News that he doesn't plan to return to Twitter if his permanent ban is lifted.

Max Gokhman, chief investment officer at money manager AlphaTrAI Inc said:

“Twitter becoming open to a bigger variety of voices is likely to the be last nail in the coffin of Truth Social's SPAC. It’s hard to see any upside for them given all of the internal struggles with even launching a scalable social platform and now the likelihood that Twitter will allow a broader range of discourse.”

On the 26th of April 2022, after Elon Musk acquired Twitter, Truth Social became the most downloaded app on the US iPhone App Store, with Twitter coming second. The download increase for the app came after the resolution of some technical issues and Trump's statements on April 14 to Americano Media about returning to Twitter after Musk's purchase.