Truth Social — the Trump-backed social media site that’s been in development for awhile — became broadly available to prospective users this week, and it… didn’t go well. As summarized by The Daily Beast, ‘[Would-be] users immediately ran into glitches and error messages. Around 11 p.m. ET [on this past Sunday night], select users who tried to create accounts were repeatedly met with a red error warning: “Something went wrong. Please try again.” Shortly thereafter, around midnight, others were told that the app was simply too popular for them to join it, with a warning that read: “Due to massive demand, we have placed you on our waitlist.”’
Breaking:
WASHINGTON (AP) — Judge rejects Trump attempt to toss conspiracy lawsuits, finds 'plausible' case former president incited Capitol riot.
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) February 18, 2022
An early version of the site was originally announced as slated to go live last November, but additional months of prep time apparently didn’t keep the ex-president’s team from rhetorically falling flat on its face this weekend. Users — well, individuals attempting to use the site — who encountered the waitlist message received a number for their position in this virtual queue, with figures reaching as high as 160,000. After all this time, Trump’s team wasn’t able to come up with something that could handle 160,000 or more additional users joining in swift succession? Hundreds of millions of people use Twitter, the social media site where Trump’s pre-riot presence was no doubt most prominent before he was booted from mainstream platforms across-the-board following his incitement of the Capitol riot.
The US government should consider canceling former President Trump's lease of a historic Washington building he made into a luxury hotel before he sells it, House Oversight panel says. https://t.co/aeeikInxch
— NBC News (@NBCNews) February 21, 2022
Devin Nunes — the now former Republican Congressman from California who became the CEO of the Trump Media & Technology Group, which is behind Truth Social — has indicated that the hope is for Truth Social to be completely ready-to-go, presumably sans glitches, by the end of March. Notably — and relatively in character for Trump — the business operation behind this venture was already placed under investigation by federal financial authorities. That investigation was revealed by Digital World Acquisition Corp. (DWAC), which announced plans back in October to merge with the Trump Media & Technology Group, and the specific agencies who put the endeavor under scrutiny include the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA). Concerns have been raised about the endeavor over the fact that those behind it appear to have been conducting deliberations over the merger plans without notifying federal officials, and federal financial authorities went after information including communications between DWAC and the company named after Trump.
Truth social will fail like all trumps other failed businesses
— ✌🏼rosanna arquette (@RoArquette) February 21, 2022
This Trump social media operation has been cast as a bastion of free speech — or something — but there remains no meaningful evidence of some kind of systematic conspiracy to silence conservatives on mainstream social media sites. Acting as though Trump himself was targeted because of his political affiliation is ridiculous — he was removed because of his incitement of deadly violence.
Social media sadly thrives on conflict. #truthsocial (which is ironically named) will be boring and fail, because it will be all Trump-fed drones. BUT, please don’t come back to real social media if you left for Trump and Nunes great idea. You get your one shot. https://t.co/aOlw8m9dPp
— Adam Kinzinger (@AdamKinzinger) February 21, 2022
