According to a listing on the App Store, former President Donald Trump’s new social network, Truth Social, will launch on iOS on February 21st. (If you didn’t know, today is Presidents Day.) Subtle.) The app is being developed by Trump’s own media organisation, the Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG), which is run by former US Representative Devin Nunes.
Based on screenshots in the App Store listing, Truth Social appears to be a Twitter clone. In one screenshot, the profile page resembles Twitter’s, and posts appear to feature icons for responses, retweets, favourites, and sharing. (In the app’s description, each individual post is referred to as a “truth.”) A “re-truth” is evidently the retweet equivalent.)
It’s almost certain that the social network’s Twitter-like design isn’t by chance. For years, Trump’s preferred medium was Twitter, until he was permanently banned in January 2021, shortly after the US Capitol insurgency on January 6th. In May, he started a blog where he posted pithy Twitter-length comments, but it wasn’t quite as popular as his previous Twitter account, and it was shut down less than a month later. In October, Trump filed a lawsuit against Twitter in an attempt to reclaim his account.
It’s unknown if Truth Social will be available on the web and/or Android on February 21st. Right now, the only thing on Truth Social’s website is a button to preorder the free app on the App Store and a form to join a waiting list. It’s also unclear whether the social network will be exclusive to invitees when it starts.
The Verge’s questions were not immediately answered by TMTG. Trump indicated in a December statement regarding TMTG’s cooperation with the video sharing site Rumble that Truth Social has already started in beta for “invited guests only” (which will provide video and streaming technology for Truth Social).
Truth Social, on the other hand, has already sparked considerable debate. Truth Social is based on Mastodon’s source code, however Mastodon issued a statement in October saying that Truth Social was in violation of Mastodon’s software agreement since it claimed to be proprietary and refused to provide its source code. Mastodon claimed it wrote Truth Social’s chief legal officer a formal letter requesting the source code, and Truth Social has subsequently created a “Open Source” section to their website.