Donald Trump has successfully made an app that promotes a clearly skewed ideology about American politics and exposes the narrowed-minded mentality that extremists exercise; this isolated app ultimately reveals the sharing of harsh propaganda and severe cases of congeniality bias from the moment users sign up.
Truth Social, curated by Donald Trump, was launched out of retaliation after he was prohibited from operating on certain sites due to the events that happened on Jan. 6. Shortly after multiple of Trump’s online accounts were suspended—or banned completely—he retaliated by proposing his own social media platform called Truth Social. Even after a few of Trump’s accounts were reinstated, he made it clear he would not be returning.
The infamous attack on the capitol interrupted the joint session where Members of Congress were tasked with counting the electoral votes for president and vice president of the United States as well as announcing the official results of the 2020 election; the public saw in real time the deaths of multiple law enforcement officers along with the attacks on the U.S. Capitol, the vice president, members of Congress and the democratic process of a U.S. presidential election.
“Rioters, attempting to disrupt the joint session of congress, broke into the Capitol building, vandalized and stole property, and ransacked offices,” according to a staff report published by the Committee on Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs. “They attacked members of law enforcement and threatened the safety and lives of our nation’s elected leaders. Tragically, seven individuals, including three law enforcement officers, ultimately lost their lives.”
The insurrection has been attributed to the many posts and statements from Donald Trump that encouraged and engaged in the rejection of Joseph Biden and Kamala Harris’ win after the 2020 presidential election. Trump riled up his agitated supporters and pushed propaganda that created a fictionalized outcome of the election; he persistently argued that this election was rigged against him and the American people need to right this wrong as soon as possible. He turned a standard election into a conspiracy theory resulting in violence. Although Trump “attempted” to stop the violence, it was far too late and besides a few posts online, he took no real action to save those at risk or protect our democratic processes.
“If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore,” said Trump during his Save America rally Jan. 6, 2021 and soon after on the same day he posted “Get smart Republicans. FIGHT,” from his X (formally Twitter) account.
After this devastating breach of American democracy and safety, Donald Trump was barred from using multiple social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Some platforms even removed any sites that promoted or shared content including him; Shopify removed his campaign store alongside Reddit who deleted the subreddits r/DonaldTrump and r/The_Donald.
“The shocking events of the last 24 hours clearly demonstrate that President Donald Trump intends to use his remaining time in office to undermine the peaceful and lawful transition of power to his elected successor, Joe Biden,” said Mark Zuckerberg in a Facebook post from his personal account. “His decision to use his platform to condone rather than condemn the actions of his supporters at the Capitol building has rightly disturbed people in the US and around the world.”
In an effort to remove any inciting or harmful content, Trump’s accounts and posts from Jan. 6 were removed from most apps completely. In response, Trump curated the Truth Social app that allows him to post his opinions, whether they are harmful or not, freely without censorship. The Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) announced the app through a press release on the TMGT website and officially released the social media app on the Apple App Store Feb. 21, 2022. After facing the social repercussions for inciting violence, he repeated his favorite line that it was because of the “liberal media” and that he would be retaliating.
“Trump Media & Technology Group’s mission is 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,” said the TMTG in their press release on Oct. 20, 2021.
The app itself mirrors the layout and features of Twitter, now known as X, functioning as a deliberately designed alternative tailored to a specific audience. Trump’s constant posts occupy most of the site’s front page and are pushed heavily through the algorithm. The app is tailored to all of Trump’s wants and desires for a propaganda-pushing platform to amplify the voices of his adherents. He now has a place where he could continue to refer to himself as “people’s favorite American President” months after being removed from office.
“I created TRUTH Social and TMTG to stand up to the tyranny of Big Tech. We live in a world where the Taliban has a huge presence on Twitter, yet your favorite American President has been silenced. This is unacceptable. I am excited to send out my first TRUTH on TRUTH Social very soon. TMTG was founded with a mission to give a voice to all. I’m excited to soon begin sharing my thoughts on TRUTH Social and to fight back against Big Tech. Everyone asks me why doesn’t someone stand up to Big Tech? Well, we will be soon,” said Trump on TMTG in their press release on Oct. 20, 2021.
Even though many view this app as a breeding ground for unrestricted hate and propaganda, the large number of active users on the app imply that millions disagree. This app’s users are constantly commenting, liking and sharing, as well as “truthing” and “retruthing” on the platform everyday supporting and promoting their political beliefs. To the app’s users, Truth Social is a safe haven for free speech and uncensored opinions. For those who have felt ignored or silenced on alternative forms of social media, Truth Social is a prime spot to express opinions freely without being banned, censored or punished for specific types of posts.
“The new age of censorship is a disaster for our country. Things were far better in the days when we had our debates fiercely and openly, and then we could move forward together, as Americans, with both sides knowing that their voice, and their best arguments, had been heard. The more I looked into this problem, the more I realized that to restore free speech, a major new platform would have to enter the market, with an ironclad commitment to protecting vigorous debate from all sides. But since it is both hard and expensive to build a new platform totally independent of Big Tech’s infrastructure, it would have to be an extremely well-funded, multi-year undertaking. In addition, such a platform would need the ability to rapidly attract millions of users, welcoming not only Republicans to join, but Independents and Democrats as well,” said Trump on TMGT in their press release on Oct. 26, 2021.
Although Trump has marketed the app as a platform meant solely for protecting speech across the entire political spectrum, it is clear from the second you open up the app who it is meant for and what this community’s goals are: a protected space to spread MAGA’s own personal ideologies without facing consequences or being fact-checked. This, among other things, is why Truth Social is not the reputable source it’s marketed to be.
The idea of a platform where anyone, from any background, can post freely without being targeted or censored is of course, a noble endeavor, but Truth Social simply isn’t that. It is far from an ethical display of how a social media app that prioritizes free speech should function. The sign-up process is simple and quick for most people, and once you’ve created a Truth Social account, you are automatically following 104 accounts; this number includes some of the president’s cabinet, a few of his loyal supporters, and Trump himself. This means before you even have the chance to curate your profile, you are already predisposed to seeing certain types of media that push ideologies that only resonate with the far right-wing demographic.
“The Center’s recent study examined 200 prominent accounts on Truth Social, selected from those with the most followers. As of June 2022, the vast majority of these accounts (94%) are individuals while 3% are organizations. And a majority of these accounts (83%) have values or other appeals in their profiles,” according to Pew Research’s Key Facts About Truth Social article. “About half of these 200 accounts (49%) have a reference to being right-leaning or pro-Trump in their profile – higher than any other alternative social media site studied. In addition, 44% of prominent accounts express a religious identity, and 43% have a reference to patriotism or a pro-America message.”
Not only does the app lack a diverse user base, Truth Social comes up short when it comes to fundamental security and safety precautions. Within two minutes of casual scrolling through posts, you could find upwards of 10 posts or advertisements created via artificial intelligence, some being posted by Trump himself. AI generated art can be created by anyone and due to how accessible it is, if Truth Social fails to filter it, mass amounts of biased or dishonest information could flood the app’s algorithm and make social media even more prone to misinformation than it already is. Truth Social was barred from the Google Play store for similar issues Aug. 19, 2022, for around 3 months due to their failure to censor violent and inciteful content.
“On Aug. 19 we notified Truth Social of several violations of standard policies in their current app submission and reiterated that having effective systems for moderating user-generated content is a condition of our terms of service for any app to go live on Google Play,” said a Google spokesman according to the New York Times.
Not only does the platform itself need work, the app’s users are exceedingly hostile. When you scroll through the substantial amounts of posts and comments, you will rarely see someone pointing out false information or presenting a differing opinion from the average Trump supporter. Oftentimes, right-wing influencers will taunt left-leaning people and attack the views of anyone who disagrees with them. Offensive and aggressive memes, edited images, and statements seem to be a staple in this community. This further shows how insular these users are.
“Dems are disgusting,” said one user. A verified user also stated “Democrats are the #1 enemy of this country.”
At the end of the day, when everyone logs off, an honest reflection reveals that our society has reversed progress and begun treading all over the original foundations of diversity and acceptance we once desired for America. Trump has proven time and time again what kind of free speech he wants and it’s nowhere near the standards for free speech that America set up years ago. The way Truth Social’s users address and speak about their peers is beyond any type of normalized hatred ever displayed online before Trump’s divisive persona brought out the worst in America’s politics and he has done nothing to address it. Truth Social instead enforces an isolation and creates a space where users can spew hatred and propaganda, fully expecting conformity from their own community.
“It was a glitchy start, but it shot to the top of Apple’s list of most downloaded free apps,” said PBS in their What to know about Truth Social article. “While the platform sought to capitalize on the outrage over Trump’s social media bans to attract a broad audience, Truth Social, much like fellow right-leaning social media platforms Gettr and Parler, has not been able to move much beyond an echo chamber of conservative political commentary — if they are able to stay online in the first place.”
