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Republicans Social Networks The Internet

Donald Trump To Launch Social Media Platform Called Truth Social (theguardian.com) 387

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Donald Trump has announced plans to launch a social media platform called TRUTH Social that will rolled be out early next year. The former president, who was banned from Facebook and Twitter earlier this year, says his goal is to rival the tech companies that have denied him the megaphone that was paramount to his rise. "I'm excited to soon begin sharing my thoughts on TRUTH social and to fight back against big tech," Trump said in a statement. Trump announced the news in a press release on Wednesday, saying the platform will be open to "invited users" for a beta launch in November, with plans to make it available to the broader public in the beginning of next year. Truth social will be a product of a new venture called the Trump Media & Technology Group which was created through a merger with Digital World Acquisition Corp. The group said it seeks to become a publicly listed company. Users can sign up to be put on a waiting list or pre-order the app via the App Store.
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Donald Trump To Launch Social Media Platform Called Truth Social

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  • Would shareholders back a company that excludes large swaths of the population as potential customers?

    • Re:Public (Score:5, Informative)

      by ArchieBunker ( 132337 ) on Thursday October 21, 2021 @08:22AM (#61913393)

      You know Trump is gonna stiff everyone for payments. Not like it hasn't happened before

      https://www.usatoday.com/story... [usatoday.com]
      https://www.newsweek.com/trump... [newsweek.com]
      https://www.wusa9.com/article/... [wusa9.com]

    • Re:Public (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Junta ( 36770 ) on Thursday October 21, 2021 @08:28AM (#61913419)

      The plethora of biased media outlets that are essentially boycotted by anyone not in the target audience suggests there's a strong business case for polarized content,.

      For Trump personally, on one hand he is a person known for bilking vendors and losing investor money in many business endeavors, on the other hand he has demonstrated success milking celebrity for celebrity's sake, which would align with this sort of platform.

      • Re: Public (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Vintermann ( 400722 ) on Thursday October 21, 2021 @08:51AM (#61913573) Homepage

        In other words, investors might make money on this, but most likely indirectly (through Trump wrecking stuff, maybe pumping a stock or a token or two) not on the actual company's profits.

        • Re: Public (Score:4, Insightful)

          by smooth wombat ( 796938 ) on Thursday October 21, 2021 @11:51AM (#61914495) Journal
          In other words, investors might make money on this, but most likely indirectly (through Trump wrecking stuff, maybe pumping a stock or a token or two) not on the actual company's profits.

          Considering his only other publicly traded company lost money every single year [marketwatch.com] when he personally ran the company while his competitors were raking in money hand over fist, it's not difficult to see how this current endeavor will end.
          • by Junta ( 36770 )

            Right, but this may be more up his alley. A social media platform that can be relatively low on assets or other concerns that are generally associated with businesses of substance that Trump does poorly with, but linked to his image and just needs a decent population of people obsessed with his image (after pretty much everything about his character out in the wild, he still had 74 million votes and a large contingency of those demonstrating unwavering loyalty and commitment to him). He raised more than $

      • Re:Public (Score:5, Insightful)

        by fermion ( 181285 ) on Thursday October 21, 2021 @09:54AM (#61913901) Homepage Journal
        Fox News proves this model works, not only financially but politically. While not excluding anyone, it focus on meeting the need of certain groups to feel,special. Mega Churches are the same model. A basic adage of business is if you can get 1% of the general population to buy your product at a profit, you will be rich. Much more effective than the long tail.
    • Re:Public (Score:5, Interesting)

      by phalse phace ( 454635 ) on Thursday October 21, 2021 @08:28AM (#61913423)

      Not only that, but would a public company allow users to post whatever they want and not have the content moderated or deleted, and will the member never get banned? That is a major grip of his and part of the reason why he's creating this company.

      Is Trump still in favor of eliminating section 230 protections now that he's starting his own media company?

      • Re:Public (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Rhipf ( 525263 ) on Thursday October 21, 2021 @09:58AM (#61913927)

        If this "social media" platform is actually controlled by Trump you can be assured that anyone on it that disagrees with his strongly held beliefs will be summarily banned.

      • Re:Public (Score:5, Insightful)

        by quantaman ( 517394 ) on Thursday October 21, 2021 @10:29AM (#61914081)

        Not only that, but would a public company allow users to post whatever they want and not have the content moderated or deleted, and will the member never get banned? That is a major grip of his and part of the reason why he's creating this company.

        Is Trump still in favor of eliminating section 230 protections now that he's starting his own media company?

        If there's anyone who believes that Trump's company will "allow users to post whatever they want and not have the content moderated or deleted" then I have a security backed by a Trump loan [nytimes.com] to sell them.

    • They plan to IPO?

  • Can I predict (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Chrisq ( 894406 ) on Thursday October 21, 2021 @08:04AM (#61913307)

    "Called TRUTH Social"

    Can I predict that it will be both untruthful and antisocial.

  • by Celt ( 125318 ) on Thursday October 21, 2021 @08:04AM (#61913309) Journal

    So it'll be full of nazi's and racists?
    Cool, least maybe they might get off the other platforms.

    Goodluck to them scaling it without AWS etc hosting the service, they don't stand a chance

    • Oh it's going to be a glorious spectacle. If you ever saw how voat.co turned out, you'll know where this goes.

      • by GameboyRMH ( 1153867 ) <gameboyrmh AT gmail DOT com> on Thursday October 21, 2021 @08:33AM (#61913463) Journal

        The hacks of this surely shoddily-assembled site should yield lots of interesting data valuable to HR departments and anti-terrorism officials alike!

      • If you ever saw how voat.co turned out, you'll know where this goes.

        Damn you!

        Here I was, finishing up my coffee and having a quick peruse of Slashdot as I waited for a VM to finish booting and a VPN to finish connecting when I saw your comment. I had not heard about voat.co before today; it is now half an hour later and I am much more informed about voat.co, see the relevance to the former president's latest train wreck, AND am now behind in my work for the day.

        Again, damn you!

    • Goodluck to them scaling it without AWS etc hosting the service, they don't stand a chance

      Pfft. Who needs AWS when you'll be as big as or bigger than AWS and Google Cloud [reuters.com]

      In a slide deck on its website, the company envisions eventually competing against Amazon.com's AWS cloud service and Google Cloud.

    • Russia will gladly host it .. if it destroys the US .. they will be there to lend a hand to their ally / traitor to his nation DJT who does all that he can to destroy the USA from within and help Russia win the war without having to fire a single shot. That's what Trump's doing. Destroying the USA for the russkies.

      • by dskoll ( 99328 )

        If Russia hosts it, the good folks at Pravda might sue for trademark infringement.

    • It's always how it goes... personally I have problems with reddit etc... when I find out their moderation etc... usually winds up giving in to pressure from china etc.. removing posts that are critical of china. Facebook has been known to remove groups that are excessively critical of police. Bottom line I've been keeping an eye out for a decent network that takes a hardline stance against censorship. But of course whenever they come out... half the time it's owned by a litteral nazi sympathizer, the other
  • by LibreHome ( 6202364 ) on Thursday October 21, 2021 @08:06AM (#61913317)
  • by BeerFartMoron ( 624900 ) on Thursday October 21, 2021 @08:08AM (#61913319)
    I guess PRAVDA was already taken.
  • by leonbev ( 111395 ) on Thursday October 21, 2021 @08:13AM (#61913343) Journal

    If the site is going to get hacked before launch, or if they're wait until after it gets launched to hack it.

    Either way, folks who sign up early should expect their information and security questions to be publicly posted somewhere by the end of the year.

    • If the site is going to get hacked before launch, or if they're wait until after it gets launched to hack it.

      Either way, folks who sign up early should expect their information and security questions to be publicly posted somewhere by the end of the year.

      And that makes ...them bad. For, er, some reason.

      • by leonbev ( 111395 )

        What I'm saying is that most of the IT folks who actually know how to properly secure things tend to work for big tech companies with Liberal leanings. Trump is probably going to end up with some amateur outfit building his site like the bozos who built Parler, and it's going to get pwned in a matter of weeks.

    • Either way, folks who sign up early should expect their information and security questions to be publicly posted somewhere by the end of the year.

      So I take it your are predicting the service to launch on Dec 31?

    • by gitano_dbs ( 1490853 ) on Thursday October 21, 2021 @08:55AM (#61913601) Homepage

      Either way, folks who sign up early should expect their information and security questions to be publicly posted somewhere by the end of the year.

      They hacked it allready as we speak :D

      Trump's Truth Social Hacked Within Hours of Announcement. https://www.newsweek.com/trump... [newsweek.com]

      • by MobyDisk ( 75490 )

        And they have already started blocking people:

        "I literally just registered 'mikepence.' ... In a subsequent tweet, he revealed that account had been suspended.

        I feel sorry for everyone who has the same name as a major politician. I wonder how many people are out there named "Donald Trump" "Joe Biden" or "Michael Bolton."

  • I'm looking forward to seeing AOC and Ilhan Omar welcomed to this new inclusive platform.

  • by franzrogar ( 3986783 ) on Thursday October 21, 2021 @08:19AM (#61913383)

    I mean, as soon as they start vomiting hate, xenophobes, etc. comments that are not deleted, the website will be blocked for violating the Human Rights and many Laws in many countries.

    So, if they want to waste money into building an infrastructure for spreading hate and violence, be my guest.

    No problem as soon as they violate Human Rights its IP address get blocked right away.

    • They aren't going to waste much money. It will probably be WordPress or something. Remember, this is DJT. When you pre-order in the app store, do you have to pre-pay? If it gets built at all, it will just be another way to get money from Trump supporters. And then the app gets kicked out of the app store. But they don't get any money back. I've seen this movie before.
  • Say or call it one thing and then do the opposite. I'm sure it will become a font of misinformation and conspiracy theories.
  • It might remove the former's alleged president's enthusiasts from Twitter, Facebook, etc. so they can all have a giant incestuous angry frenzy all by themselves for themselves.

    • It actually says something that Islamic militants like ISIS have a better understanding of the twitter TOS than Trump.

      • Trump understands it fine, he just gives zero fucks.

        All his life he's been used to getting his way.

        Becoming president emboldened him in the same way that it emboldened thousands of other shitlords.

  • Is this the Facebook rebranding?

  • WHOIS information (Score:5, Informative)

    by GlennC ( 96879 ) on Thursday October 21, 2021 @08:30AM (#61913441)

    https://whois.domaintools.com/truthsocial.com [domaintools.com]

    Information Below - it was just updated earlier this morning:

    Domain Name: TRUTHSOCIAL.COM
    Registry Domain ID: 1687853954_DOMAIN_COM-VRSN
    Registrar WHOIS Server: whois.tucows.com
    Registrar URL: http://tucowsdomains.com/ [tucowsdomains.com]
    Updated Date: 2021-10-19T14:39:13
    Creation Date: 2011-11-18T19:13:50
    Registrar Registration Expiration Date: 2023-11-18T19:13:50
    Registrar: TUCOWS, INC.
    Registrar IANA ID: 69
    Reseller: Aron Wagner
    Domain Status: clientTransferProhibited https://icann.org/epp#clientTr... [icann.org]
    Domain Status: clientUpdateProhibited https://icann.org/epp#clientUp... [icann.org]
    Registry Registrant ID:
    Registrant Name: Contact Privacy Inc. Customer 0162686270
    Registrant Organization: Contact Privacy Inc. Customer 0162686270
    Registrant Street: 96 Mowat Ave
    Registrant City: Toronto
    Registrant State/Province: ON
    Registrant Postal Code: M6K 3M1
    Registrant Country: CA
    Registrant Phone: +1.4165385457
    Registrant Phone Ext:
    Registrant Fax:
    Registrant Fax Ext:
    Registrant Email: domainabuse@tucows.com
    Registry Admin ID:
    Admin Name: Contact Privacy Inc. Customer 0162686270
    Admin Organization: Contact Privacy Inc. Customer 0162686270
    Admin Street: 96 Mowat Ave
    Admin City: Toronto
    Admin State/Province: ON
    Admin Postal Code: M6K 3M1
    Admin Country: CA
    Admin Phone: +1.4165385457
    Admin Phone Ext:
    Admin Fax:
    Admin Fax Ext:
    Admin Email: voyagerarms1776@gmail.com
    Registry Tech ID:
    Tech Name: Contact Privacy Inc. Customer 0162686270
    Tech Organization: Contact Privacy Inc. Customer 0162686270
    Tech Street: 96 Mowat Ave
    Tech City: Toronto

    Looks like it's hosted by CDN77

  • I wish him the same good fortune he's had with his other stellarly-producing ventures. The only downside is that his users won't be able to sue him after the fact, like with TrumpU, since they won't be paying him for the privilege of posting their right-wing insanity.

  • It will be Zune compatible . . .

  • Defeated useless Former Guy begs for attention ... film at 11

  • It's not going to go anywhere and it's just a publicity stunt. They never put enough money into any of this to get the kind of people that could build something that works and even if they did the only purpose of these politically oriented do social media networks is that when you get kicked off Facebook and Twitter or being an asshole and/or a racist you can go to them and post all the really nasty stuff the other networks won't allow. The problem with that being nobody wants to be on a network listening t
  • Let's remember (Score:2, Insightful)

    by argStyopa ( 232550 )

    That it's useful to keep an object of hate in the public consciousness.

    Congress just found Steve Bannon 'in contempt of congress' (LOL who isn't?) for not showing up for some public whipping over crap that supposedly happened years ago.

    Donald Trump was a buffoon as a president, who only was elected because nobody took him seriously in either the GOP nor DNC, and both underestimated the willingness of the public to vote for any clown that didn't seem to be part of the swamp.
    And we see how that turned out.

    He'

    • Re:Let's remember (Score:5, Informative)

      by ArchieBunker ( 132337 ) on Thursday October 21, 2021 @09:16AM (#61913695)

      Steve Bannon is already a convicted felon and I love how you phrase "supposedly happened" when we have live streams of people interrupting high level government proceedings. He's in contempt for not complying with the Jan 6th investigation.

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      By "crap that supposedly happened years ago" you mean the armed insurgency against the Capitol building that happened in January.

      It will be a long time before he is forgotten, not least because many in the GQP think he should still be president.

    • Re:Let's remember (Score:4, Informative)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Thursday October 21, 2021 @10:09AM (#61913983) Journal

      Congress just found Steve Bannon 'in contempt of congress' (LOL who isn't?) for not showing up for some public whipping over crap that supposedly happened years ago.

      January 6 is not "years ago". And the investigation is being slowed by the GOP, who try every trick in the book to delay and gum up.

    • Re:Let's remember (Score:5, Informative)

      by UnknowingFool ( 672806 ) on Thursday October 21, 2021 @10:10AM (#61913989)

      Congress just found Steve Bannon 'in contempt of congress' (LOL who isn't?) for not showing up for some public whipping over crap that supposedly happened years ago.

      By years ago you mean this year. This year. And by "public whipping" you mean a subpoena. Other than those two blatant twisting of the facts, you almost got that right.

  • by MooseTick ( 895855 ) on Thursday October 21, 2021 @08:52AM (#61913587) Homepage

    I'd bet money they will pull a Google+ and pre-populate the users with a list of profiles the GOP has on hand. That way they can claim they already have x million users on day 1 and what a success it is. I'd also wager they will NEVER release any metrics on actual users and deny any reports from 3rd parties regarding traffic or actual user base.

  • ...but the ranking algorithm will surely make seeing what they don't like impossible.
  • Look at the bright side, folks: it won't last long, but while it's around, it'll serve as a containment site for the ne'er-do-wells and deplorables of the country, making it much easier for the FBI and Homeland Security to keep track of these people. Might even help them get some of the worst of them off the street permanently.
  • So this is a NEW conservative-friendly social media platform? Will this one be as successful as PillowTalk (or whatever Mike Lindell called his new conservative friendly social media platform that we've heard very little about since it was launched and promptly hacked)? And besides, I thought we already had Parler and Rumble. So what's purpose does this one server? Rhetorical question...I know it's too difficult for Trump to profit from his idiot squad vomiting all over those platforms. Just imaging having

  • Has anyone bought the domain name yet? ;-)

  • If this models Twitter, how funny would it be if a bunch of people signed up and "followed" an account for Rosie O'Donnell (and/or Obama) surpassing Trump's popularity on his own site.

    The only problem with doing that would be they would claim all those accounts as real users to demonstrate what a success it is.

  • Orwellian (Score:5, Insightful)

    by skam240 ( 789197 ) on Thursday October 21, 2021 @09:24AM (#61913729)

    A social network run by Trump called "TRUTH social" strikes me as one of the most Orwellian https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] things I've heard of in quite some time. Its title alone certainly seems to be an excellent example of doublethink https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] when one considers Trump's relationship with what most of would call truth.

  • by morgauxo ( 974071 ) on Thursday October 21, 2021 @09:37AM (#61913793)

    We all need to get ahead of this and start talking about it as "The Ministry of Truth" online so we can get that nickname cemented in the public mind before he even starts.

  • "Truth" is dead. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Petersko ( 564140 ) on Thursday October 21, 2021 @09:42AM (#61913833)

    Simply as a word, "truth" is done, and should be abandoned to the scrap heap of linguistic history. It used to be that "truth"was the domain of philosophers, but it has been co-opted and degraded. At the very least, it's official definition should be altered to read something like, "Supporting the narrative of the speaker, regardless of veracity."

    "Fact", despite "alternative", is still hanging in there. Fight to keep that one. But just give up on "truth".

  • It's Mastodon (Score:5, Interesting)

    by PopeRatzo ( 965947 ) on Thursday October 21, 2021 @11:46AM (#61914467) Journal

    And it's in violation of AGPLv3. Finally, some news for open source nerds.

    https://www.vice.com/en/articl... [vice.com]

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