Topline
Donald Trump’s new social media platform, Reality Social, launched on Apple’s App Retailer early Monday, organising a return to social media for the previous president who was banned from all mainstream on-line platforms final 12 months after being accused of inciting his supporters to interact in violence in the course of the January 6 Capitol Riots.
Key Info
The primary public release Reality Social went dwell on the iPhone App Retailer late Sunday night time, describing itself as a social media platform that’s “free from political discrimination.”
Individuals who downloaded the app complained that they had been seeing error messages when making an attempt to create their accounts.
Forbes was capable of affirm that a number of different customers obtained a message that their account was efficiently created, however they’ve been positioned on a waitlist “because of large demand.”
Primarily based on the pictures of its consumer interface displayed on the App Retailer, Reality Social’s design carefully mimics that of Twitter, the platform that was most extensively utilized by the previous president.
What We Don’t Know
It’s unclear if signup points encountered by early customers of the app have something to do with the purported delay within the full-fledged launch of the platform till March. Final week, the New York Occasions reported {that a} full rollout of the platform could also be pushed again to March because the Securities and Change Fee (SEC) is investigating the particular goal acquisition firm (SPAC) that’s set to merge with Reality Social’s dad or mum, Trump Media & Expertise Group (TMTG), and take it public.
Key Background
Final 12 months, Trump was permanently banned from Twitter and each different main social media platform, days after the Capitol riots. Trump instantly decried this determination and accused massive tech corporations of “censorship and cancel tradition” and predicted that his followers would quickly desert their platforms in droves. Within the wake of the ban, a number of right-wing different platforms like Gettr, Parler, Gab and Rumble tried to current themselves as free from censorship however the former president by no means formally joined them. In October, Trump announced plans to launch Reality Social and its dad or mum firm TMTG, which plans to go public by merging with blank-check firm Digital World Acquisition Corp.
Additional Studying
Trump’s Truth Social Is Poised to Join a Crowded Field (New York Occasions)