This article was originally posted on 10/24/21 titled: You Won’t Believe What Donald Trump Just Announced About Social Media—He Must Be Kidding!
Social media has not been a friend of Donald Trump’s over the last year, and just nine months after getting banned from Twitter for his role in the raid on the Capitol building, the former President has declared that he will be launching his own media company. Titled “Trump Media & Technology Group,” the company will also have a social media platform called “Truth Social,” which Trump says he hopes will compete with the very media companies which kicked him off their platforms.
Trump has been vocal about his outrage in being shut out from a variety of social media platforms, and in a statement about his new media company he said, “We live in a world where the Taliban has a huge presence on Twitter, yet your favorite American President has been silenced. This is unacceptable.”
The new app is expected to launch sometime next month, but has done little to explain what potential users can expect from the app interface. However, his statement did share that his latest project "would stand up to the tyranny of Big Tech," and will invite guests to be a part of the soft launch in the coming weeks.
Alongside the social media app, Trump also plans to roll out a video streaming platform as well, which he believes will rival Disney+ and Netflix as competitors. The platform, which will be called TMTG+ is said to feature news, podcasts, and other entertainment content. Trump’s new media conglomerate will merge with Digital World Acquisition Group to create a larger company with the former President as the chair.
While Trump has been known for failing to follow through on big promises, the former President did announce his plans for kickstarting a new social media platform after he was initially banned from Facebook, Twitter and YouTube back in January. After a failed attempt to start his own blog in May, it seems that this time, “Truth Social” may actually have slightly more traction. Watch out, big tech...
This article was updated on 05/25/22 with the information below:
Although Trump's plans to launch a social media platform called Truth Social have (partly) come to fruition, it isn’t actually as successful as the former President had hoped it would be. And it should come as no surprise to learn that he is blaming everyone but himself for its failure. More specifically, he is blaming Google, and is saying that the company is trying to sabotage him by not making his social media platform available on Android devices.
"Is Google trying to [expletive] me?" Trump reportedly said, according to Rolling Stone. An insider also told the pub: "He keeps hearing about how Google and YouTube have it out for him, including on Truth Social, and I think he’s taking [it] seriously."
Interestingly, the app has solely been available on Apple devices and cannot be downloaded by users on Android devices. This is reportedly because the correct paperwork hasn’t been filed to allow it to be listed on the Google Play store; although the former President believes that the reason is far more personal than that! Rolling Stone writes: "The source of his paranoia, according to two people with knowledge of the ex-president’s query, was the absence of an Android app for his struggling social media app, Truth Social. Since it launched in February, the app has been available only on Apple devices, leaving Android users — roughly 40 percent of the U.S. mobile device market — without access to the platform. This has left Trump with questions about the status of the product and whether his perceived enemies at Google had any plans to reject it."
