Former President Donald Trump is once again vowing to create his own answer to Twitter and Facebook.
After being bounced off major platforms for inciting the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, Trump says he will launch the Trump Media & Technology Group and an app called “TRUTH Social.”
The new venture, created through a merger with Digital World Acquisition Corp., seeks to become a publicly listed company on the NASDAQ stock exchange in 2022. Shares of Digital World Acquisition quadrupled in value in afternoon trading Thursday, even though there’s a long way to go before the deal gets finalized and the venture becomes a bona fide media outlet.
“It’s been many, many months since there’s been a SPAC merger greeted with this amount of enthusiasm,” said Jay Ritter, a professor at the University of Florida who specializes in initial public offerings.
Trump says the goal is to counter what he calls the liberal “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,” he said in a statement. “This is unacceptable.”
Intrepid users successfully set up fake accounts in Trump’s name on the new app within hours of the announcement.
After seeing the fake accounts, a social media site called Mastodon claimed Thursday that Trump’s app appears to be copied from theirs.
Trump’s new-media bid could also compete for viewers on conservative networks such as OANN, Newsmax and Fox News, she said.
With Apple and Google cracking down on apps that violate the companies’ content guidelines, Trump’s social media app also “could provide a new venue for fake news and extremism,” Cirone said.
The new Trump company asserts that it will compete with global media conglomerates from Facebook and Twitter to Netflix and Disney+. It also suggests it will include cloud computing and payments, going head-to-head with tech big boys Amazon, Microsoft and Google.
With News Wire Services
