Team Trump has been cooking up its own social network ever since the then-president was thrown off all major platforms for his posts inciting the Capitol riot.
Yet, even though what they came up with appeared to just rip off Twitter, it seems a year wasn’t enough time to make a useable product.
Truth Social, the Trump-created Twitter alternative, went live in Apple’s App Store on Sunday night, and would-be users immediately ran into glitches and error messages.
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Around 11 p.m. ET, select users who tried to create accounts were repeatedly met with a red error warning: “Something went wrong. Please try again.” Shortly thereafter, around midnight, others were told that the app was simply too popular for them to join it, with a warning that read: “Due to massive demand, we have placed you on our waitlist.”
The waitlist numbers fluctuated throughout the night, with The Daily Beast’s reporter at one point sitting at 96,427th place in line on Monday morning. Other users reported queue positions as high as 160,000.
Additionally, on Monday, a web status notice posted to Truth Social’s website read: “Due to the overwhelming demand at launch, we are currently rate-limited on onboarding new users to the platform. We are working to increase signup capacity for onboarding and will continue to update this status as capacity increases.”
The Trump Media & Technology Group did not immediately respond to The Daily Beast’s request for comment.
Elsewhere, Trump’s social media venture faces the possibility of future legal action, as Twitter users have pointed out similarities between their Truth logo and that of the U.K.-based trucking analytics company Trailar. (“We are now seeking legal advice to understand next steps and options available to protect our brand,” Trailar’s head of marketing Matthew Summers told The Daily Beast on Monday morning.)
On Sunday, Devin Nunes, the former Republican congressman-turned-CEO of Trump Media & Technology Group, said that he hopes the new app will be fully operational by the end of March.
“This week, we’ll begin to roll out people on the Apple App store,” he said. “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.”
Once the Trump-led enterprise gets off the ground, the social media venture will face plenty of competition from the likes of the far-right platform Gab and Gettr, the more similarly angled platform run by ex-Trump aide Jason Miller and funded by Chinese businessman Guo Wengui.
Despite being billed as a venture to “stand up to the tyranny of Big Tech,” Trump’s new platform will utilize AI censors to police its content. The Fox Business Network reported in January that Truth had enlisted “a San Francisco-based Series D start-up that provides automated solutions through cloud-based artificial intelligence for understanding images, videos, and text content.”
Read it at CNET
