Photo: Alamy
On Thursday, President Donald Trump posed a question for users of his new social media platform, Truth Social. “How good is TRUTH?” Trump asked in a “Truth” posted to his account. “Far better than Fake Account Twitter!” he continued.
Truth Social has been operating since February, and since then, millions of people have joined the platform. In a recent interview with Lou Dobbs on “The Great America Show,” Trump remarked that the platform was “hot as a pistol.” He added, “…I think it’s better than Twitter with all its bots and its fake accounts.”
Truth Social has been marketed as a free speech platform for users wishing to escape the Big Tech censorship of platforms like Facebook and Twitter.
In April, SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Twitter for $44 billion. In an announcement following the acquisition news, Musk stated, “Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated…Twitter has tremendous potential – I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it.”
However, Musk’s deal is on hold due to “details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users,” the Tesla CEO stated on Twitter.
In fact, Twitter’s reported high percentage of spam and bot accounts appear to have driven more users to Truth Social than ever before. Shortly after Musk’s Twitter acquisition was announced, Truth Social eclipsed Twitter in the Apple App Store, rocketing to number one.
The 45th president previously predicted Twitter’s downfall, citing “the massive numbers of Bots and Fake Accounts.”
Additionally, Truth Social itself is in a unique position. “At Truth Social, we cannot use any of the ‘tech giants’ because we don’t want to be in a position to be shut down,” Trump Media & Technology Group CEO Devin Nunes stated in May.
“Get off Twitter,” Trump wrote in another post shared to his account, “we have TRUTH on our side!”
