Former US President Donald Trump stated on Wednesday that he will create his social networking platform dubbed “TRUTH Social,” which will go live in beta next month for “invited visitors.”
Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) will own the long-awaited platform, which also plans to establish a subscription video-on-demand service with “non-woke” entertainment programming, according to a statement.
“I created TRUTH Social and TMTG to stand up to the tyranny of Big Tech,” Trump, who was banned from Twitter and Facebook in the wake of the Capitol insurrection carried out by his supporters on January 6 this year, was quoted as saying in the statement.
“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,” he continued.
TMTG, a publicly-listed company
The Trump Media & Technology Group will merge with Digital Acquisition Corp, a blank check company, to become TMTG a publicly-listed company, according to a statement.
“The transaction values Trump Media & Technology Group at an initial enterprise value of $875 Million, with a potential additional earnout of $825 Million in additional shares (at the valuation they are granted) for a cumulative valuation of up to $1.7 Billion depending on the performance of the stock price post-business combination,” it stated.
Ways to reclaim his internet platform
Donald Trump has been seeking ways to recapture his internet platform since he was banned from the world’s leading social networks as punishment for inciting the mob that ravaged Congress on January 6.
In May he launched a blog called “From the Desk of Donald J. Trump,” which was touted as a major new outlet.
In the aftermath of the Capitol chaos, Trump was banned from Instagram, YouTube, and Snapchat, and the blog was deleted barely a month later.
Jason Miller, a former Donald Trump advisor, created the social network Gettr earlier last year, but the former president has yet to join.
Social media and tech companies that took action against Donald Trump
Following the attack on the Capitol on January 6, Donald Trump was permanently banned from Twitter and suspended “indefinitely” from Facebook.
Amazon dropped Parler, a social media software characterized as “Twitter without rules,” from its Amazon Web Services cloud hosting service on January 9. Many vocal extremists and conspiracy theorists use Parler, according to reports, including at least one of the Trump fans who perished in the Capitol riot. Unless they found another hosting service, Parler would be offline by the evening of January 10th.
“Recently, we’ve seen a steady increase in this violent content on your website, all of which violates our terms,” the AWS Trust and Safety team emailed Parler chief policy officer Amy Peikoff, per Buzzfeed News. “It’s clear that Parler does not have an effective process to comply with the AWS terms of service.”
Parler was removed from Google and Apple’s respective app stores as a result of this. In a text to The New York Times, Parler CEO John Matze wrote, “Big tech really wants to kill competition and I have a lot of work to do in the next 24 hours to make sure everyone’s data is not permanently deleted off the internet.”
On January 6, Facebook disabled the president’s account for 24 hours. By January 7, Mark Zuckerberg had explained his decision and said that Trump’s accounts will be blocked “indefinitely and for at least the next two weeks until the peaceful transition of power is complete.”
On June 4, it was announced that the suspension would be in effect for two years, beginning on January 7.
A spokeswoman for Trump verified to The Hill that he was barred from Snapchat during the rioting on January 6.
“We are not currently promoting the president’s content on Snapchat’s Discover platform,” a Snap spokesperson told Business Insider at the time. “We will not amplify voices who incite racial violence and injustice by giving them free promotion on Discover. Racial violence and injustice have no place in our society and we stand together with all who seek peace, love, equality, and justice in America.”
