Trump, the former President, has now officially announced that he will launch his own social media platform in 2022. This comes just a few months after an aide revealed his plans to Fox News. It's called TRUTH Social and is part of Trump's camp's effort to combat "the Big Tech Companies of Silicon Valley", which apparently have used their unilateral power in America to silence opposition voices.
Trump supporters believe social media platforms are biased against conservative voices. In 2018, they sued Twitter, Facebook, and Google. They claimed that they had broken antitrust laws, violated their First Amendment rights, and conspired to suppress conservative views. The case was dismissed a few times. A New York University study published earlier this year found no evidence of a conservative bias in the most popular social networks. In the months before the US Presidential Elections, there was an Instagram bug that preferred Trump content to Biden's.
However, it is true that Trump was banned from Twitter and Facebook following the January 6th US Capitol Riots. Twitter determined that Trump's tweets violated its policies at the time. The website states that his tweets (which can be viewed in an archive) "must have been read in the context broader events in this country and the ways in Which the Presidents Statements Can Be Mobilized By Different Audiences, including to Incite Violence
Trump filed a lawsuit earlier this month to get his Twitter account restored. He claimed that the ban violated his First Amendment rights. TRUTH Social gives a special mention to Trump's ban on the site. In a statement, he stated that "We live in an era where the Taliban have a large presence on Twitter, but your favorite American President is silenced."
TRUTH Social will launch a beta launch for invited guests in November. Trump and his team expect to roll it out nationally in the first quarter 2022.
