Washington
Nine months after being expelled from social media for his role in inciting the Jan 6 Capitol insurrection, former President Donald Trump said on Wednesday he is launching a new media company with its own social media platform.
Truth Social will be created through a new company formed by a merger of the Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG) and a special acquisition company (SPAC), according to a press release distributed by both organisations.
“We live in a world where the Taliban has a huge presence on Twitter, yet your favourite American President has been silenced. This is unacceptable,” Trump said in a written statement included in the release.
“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,” he said.
“I created TRUTH Social and TMTG to stand up to the tyranny of Big Tech,” Trump was quoted as saying in the statement.
The social network, set for a beta launch next month and full rollout in the first quarter of 2022, is the first of three stages in the company’s plans, followed by a subscription video-on-demand service called TMTG+ that will feature entertainment, news and podcasts, according to the news release.
Truth Social’s terms of service, meanwhile, bar users from annoying any of the site’s employees and from statements that “disparage, tarnish, or otherwise harm, in our opinion, us and/or the Site”. It was not immediately clear who the “us” in that statement refers to.
In a slide deck on its website, the company envisions eventually competing against Amazon’s AWS cloud service and Google Cloud.
A Trump representative who declined to be named confirmed the contents of the TMTG news release to Reuters. Trump spokesperson Liz Harrington also tweeted a copy.
“For so long, Big Tech has suppressed conservative voices,” the former president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., told Fox News in an interview.
“Tonight my father signed a definitive merger agreement to form what will ultimately be the Trump Media and Technology Group and Truth Social” — a platform for everyone to express their feelings.
Facebook banned Trump indefinitely on January 7, later narrowing the ban to two years. Twitter quickly followed, permanently suspending Trump’s account — which had more than 88 million followers at the time — due to the “risk of further incitement of violence”.—AFP
