Truth Social, the alternative social media platform created by former President Donald J. Trump, launched on Apple’s app store Monday, rising to become the most popular social networking platform in the app store shortly after release.
President Trump announced he would create an alternative social media platform shortly after he was banned from every major leftist-run platform, including Google, Facebook, and Twitter.
Breitbart News has extensively covered how Silicon Valley companies joined forces to hurt Trump’s chances in the 2020 election, including by suppressing conservative media and censoring the President himself.
Truth Social’s CEO is former Republican congressman Devin Nunes, whose one-man campaign to expose the Russigate hoax is chronicled in the hit book and documentary The Plot Against The President.
Truth Social’s success on the app store contributed to a tech slowdown, with multiple users reporting that they have been placed on a waitlist due to massive demand.
One vulnerability that Truth Social will face going forward is its dependence on the Apple App store.
In January, shortly after President Trump (who was at that time still in office) was banned from Twitter, the conservative-friendly social networking app Parler enjoyed record growth, rising to the top of app stores on both Google and Apple.
But Apple and Google quickly blacklisted the app, booting it off their app stores. This was followed by Amazon Web Services (AWS), the leading web hosting company, denying service to Parler as well — effectively knocking it off the internet.
Parler later found a new web host, and was able to return to the Apple App Store.
The tendency of app stores, web hosting providers, and other internet infrastructure services to discriminate against conservative businesses has led to the rise of what some are calling the “parallel economy.”
Gab, the first free speech friendly alternative to Twitter and Facebook, has built its own web servers as an alternative to AWS, and has built its own payment processor as an alternative to PayPal and Stripe.
Truth Social is being hosted by Right Forge, another conservative-owned alternative to AWS.
Meanwhile, the Christian-owned, free speech-friendly funding platform GiveSendGo has been in the news recently for hosting a fundraiser for the Canadian Freedom Convoy after the campaign was booted from leftist-owned GoFundMe.
GiveSendGo’s founder appeared on Breitbart News Daily with Alex Marlow recently to discuss his company’s refusal to acquiesce to demands from the Canadian government to freeze the truckers’ funds.
Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News. He is the author of #DELETED: Big Tech’s Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal The Election.