Former President Donald Trump’s new social network, Truth Social, will launch on iOS on February 21, according to a listing on the App Store. (That’s President’s Day, in case you didn’t know. Subtle.) The app is being built by Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), Trump’s new media company led by former US Representative Devin Nunes.
Truth Social looks like a Twitter clone, based on the screenshot in the App Store listing. The profile page, shown in a screenshot, looks almost like Twitter, and the posts show icons for reply, retweet, favors and sharing. (Truth describes each individual post as “true” in the description of the social app. The retweet equivalent is apparently called “re-truth.”)
The Twitter-like design of the social network is almost certainly no accident. Twitter was Trump’s favorite megaphone for years, until he was permanently banned in January 2021, shortly after the January 6 uprising on the US Capitol. In May, he launched what was essentially a blog where he posted scathing Twitter-length comments, but it wasn’t nearly as popular as his former Twitter account and was shut down less than a month after launch. went. Trump filed a lawsuit in October in an attempt to restore his account on Twitter.
It’s unclear whether February 21st is also when Truth will be available on the social web and/or Android. If you visit Truth Social’s website now, there’s only a button to preorder the free app on the App Store and a form you can fill out to be on the waiting list. It’s also unclear whether the social network will be invite-only when it launches.
TMTG did not immediately respond to questions from ledge, Truth Social has already launched in beta for “invited guests only,” Trump said as part of a December announcement about TMTG’s partnership with video-sharing site Rumble (which will provide video and streaming technology for Truth Social). as said.
However, Truth Social has already been embroiled in some controversy. Truth Social is built using Mastodon’s source code, but in October, Mastodon published a statement stating that TruthSocial was infringing Mastodon’s software license because TruthSocial claimed it was proprietary. And because Truth Social didn’t share its source code back then. Mastodon said it sent a formal letter to Truth Social’s chief legal officer asking it to share the source code, and Truth Social has since added an “open source” section to its website.
