“Truth Social”, Donald Trump’s answer to his banishment from social networks, should be generally available on February 21, 2021. This comes from a hidden note on Apple’s App Store website for the software. It says: “datePublished”: “Feb 21, 2022”. So far, the app can only be pre-ordered in Apple’s App Store, an Android version is available on the website of the responsible company Trump Media & Technology Group Corp. (TMTG) not specified.
The date could clarify a claim, as February 21st is the birthday of the first President of the United States, George Washington, and is a public holiday there. Despite his electoral defeat by Joe Biden in November 2020, Trump continues to see himself as the only rightful incumbent, he had already announced before the election that he could only be defeated by fraud.
Twitter, Facebook and YouTube had Trump’s accounts blocked in January 2021 shortly before the end of his term in office. The trigger was the storming of the US Capitol by supporters of Trump a year ago and that he had expressed sympathy for the attackers. In March 2021, the first rumors surfaced that Trump was planning his own social network, it could be up within three months.
Media pendulum left
The TMTG website says that in 2021 the media pendulum will have swung dangerously far to the left. Silicon Valley, mainstream media, and big tech have begun forcibly silencing those voices that disagree with ideology. Big tech platforms not only censored content, they determined what can and cannot be said. “They control the future. They control you,” it says there. TMTG, on the other hand, wants to create “a level playing field” as an open media platform.
In October last year, allegations were made that the developers of “Truth Social” had violated an open source license. The accusation was that anyone who continues to use code under AGPLv3 like Truth Social must also follow the license and make the mastodon code modified by hand accessible, but that did not happen. Screenshots of the preview of Trump’s software show at least a similarity with Twitter.
In December 2021, TMTG announced that it had raised $ 1 billion from investors. In total, the company would now have approximately 1.25 billion US dollars.
In mid-December, TMTG announced a partnership with the media company Rumble, in which venture capitalist Peter Thiel, a Trump supporter, has invested. Rumble is to deliver cloud technology for video transmission and streaming on a planned video-on-demand platform TMTG +.
(anw)