Former US President Donald Trump’s “Truth Social” app launched on Monday, hitting the top of the US Apple App Store rankings on its debut.
The Truth Social app was created by Trump and his inner circle because of conservative censorship on apps, such as Twitter. Aiming to promote free speech, it encourages its users to share their opinion and insists that it is free of censorship. “What makes Truth Social different? We are a social media platform that is free from political discrimination. Join us and share, communicate, and have fun!” the app’s description reads.
Trump’s Truth Social launches a little over year after the former US president was permanently banned from Twitter over his role in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol. And, as of publication, Truth Social is the highest-ranking free app on the App Store in the US. It is also is the No. 1 trending title in the App Store’s “Social Networking” category.
Trump app deemed a success
Conservatives’ delight at the launch of this new app can be summed up by House Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene. “I understand what millions of conservatives have gone through having their personal freedom of speech stolen from them by Big Tech for not parroting the approved messaging,” she said.
Greene’s own Twitter account was suspended last month for spreading COVID-19 misinformation.
Users report issues with Trump app
Despite the seemingly successful launch, there seemed to be a lot user issues with the app. A number of people complained it took multiple attempts to complete registration, with many users reporting that wait lists were in the hundreds of thousands to use the app.
While it seemingly has attracted broad interest, many users who attempted to sign up for Truth Social accounts on Monday reported encountering error messages, such as one reading “Something went wrong. Please try again,” when they tried to sign up.
“Apple released the Truth Social application in the App Store at 23:00 20 February,” a message on the Truth Social status page said on Sunday. “The Truth Social application is online, although user creation is currently rate-limited during our rollout. We will expand capacity over the coming hours to enable more users to join Truth Social.”
Trump supporters claimed this as proof of the app’s immense popularity, while detractors stated that it is proof of bad design planning. Regardless, it remains that most users are still unable to access Truth Social.
The platform’s tech team themselves seem to have acknowledged the issue, by stating that “overwhelming demand on launch” forced them to limit the number of signups, and that they were “working to increase signup capacity for onboarding.”
An Android version of the Truth Social app is in development, but there’s been no ETA on when that might launch.
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