With so many tons of social media platforms sprouting up, the king of divergence, Donald Trump, like always has something to surprise us! Trump has announced that he is launching his own social media network called the, “Truth Social.”
Trump and Truth don’t go together just like Pineapples don’t go with Pizza! Or do they? Well, what can we expect from this platform? A political platform that just sides with the political ideas Trump has every other day? And then he can change the truth whenever he likes, as we have seen tons of times in the past.
The new social media platform will be launched through a newly formed company, Trump Media and Technology Corp. The nationwide launch of the social platform is expected in the first quarter of 2022, while the beta version will be available from next month.
Of course, Trump says things that are very controversial and offend a lot of people. One reason to launch his own platform seems to be that he has been banned from Twitter for the last 9 months. Twitter cited Trump’s posts as violating its policy against the glorification of violence. Taking advantage of the rise in subscriptions of video-on-demand services increasing, the platform will also have its streaming platform, TMTG+ which is aimed to feature “non-woke” programming.
Trump announces new social media network called "TRUTH Social" pic.twitter.com/Qi2hWEK8XH
— Around the globe (@A_theGlobe) October 21, 2021
Digital World Acquisition Corp. will merge with Trump Media and Technology Corp. as a publicly listed company subject to regulatory and shareholder approval. Digital World is popular as a special purpose acquisition company, which are used for the sole purpose of merging with another business entity for an (IPO) initial public offering.
The company’s mission is announced to “create a rival to the liberal media consortium and fight back against the Big Tech companies of Silicon Valley, which have used their unilateral power to silence opposing voices in America.”
Trump’s obsession with creating a social media platform of his own comes from the fact that he has been removed from both Facebook and Twitter and some other lesser-known platforms. These major platforms have been blamed for being biased towards the conservative voices, despite the fact it’s a favourite talking point on the right. The Right-wing figures, on the other hand quite often dominate the list of most popular Facebook posts.
Angry and annoyed with Twitter and Facebook, Trump stated, “I created Truth Social and TMTG to stand up to the tyranny of Big Tech.” Now, it’s one thing to say that, and even go as far as creating your own platform, but executing it and making its place in the market is something else. Especially when the goals aren’t purely business-related.
This isn’t the first time Trump has attempted to have control over social media to spread his messages, last year a platform called Parler was launched. The platform served as to praise Trump. Surprisingly, it did start getting momentum and many media stars on the conservative side supported him over there. But as the platform allowed to advocate violence and promoted the January attack on the US Capitol, both Apple and Google removed it from their stores. Even Amazon kicked off the platform from its Web Services.
As per chairman and CEO of Digital World Acquisition Corp. Patrick Orlando, “$293 million in trust, assuming minimal redemptions, which can fuel TMTG’s scale-up, including to provide world class-leading technology services to build strong and secure social networks and diverse media offerings.”
The producer of Deal or No Deal, America’s Got Talent and other famous game shows, Scott St. John will serve as leader of TMTG+ corporate operations. Back in May, Trump even launched a blog so that his followers could share his posts on their own accounts. However, it didn’t take off well.
The world knows, Trump values his own opinion the most! So, Truth Social has terms of service which include a long list of prohibited activities. Such as using content from the site to “harass, abuse, or harm another person. But when it comes to Trump, he definitely wants the ultimate power, so there is another clause, “Users also have to agree not to disparage, tarnish, or otherwise harm, in our opinion, us and/or the Site.”
