Donald Trump, the former President of the United States, fought the mainstream media using his own ways.
To many people's conclusion, Trump failed, and later became the first country leader to have ever been banned from using Twitter.
After being banned on other social media networks as well, he went to Parler, a social media platform favored by conservatives.
He also had his son asking Elon Musk to create another social media network to "save free speech in America".
Knowing that social media networks were his megaphones, being banned from the mainstream social media didn't stop Trump, as he launched his own social network named Truth Social, back in October 2021.
At that time, it was only meant for a limited few.
The move happened not long after Trump's project received $1 billion in funding.
Investors were investing their money into a merged venture consisting of TMTG itself, and the Digital World Acquisition Corp, a Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC).
Following the deal, TMTG was reportedly valued at $4 billion.
When the app was initially launched to only 500 users, Trump's team didn't mention anything about the app's go-live date.
After claiming the test a success, the team is releasing the app to more people.
In the hopes of gaining influence in the industry, Trump has made Truth Social available to all iOS users in the U.S..
Conservative social media platforms have been around for a while. But with Trump having his own social media network, the former U.S. President might be the ultimate flag bearer of the right.
His platform may in turn become a place for those people who are also banned on mainstream platforms.
Truth Social is designed and developed to be similar to Twitter.
With it, users can make posts (called "truth") and share others' posts ("retruths"). The platform also features a newsfeed, called a "truth feed", as well as a notification system that is pretty similar to Twitter's.
Behind the scene, the Truth Social platform uses a custom version of the free and open-source social network hosting software Mastodon.
With its marketing message, and Trump behind its back, Truth was considered a potential player in the alt-tech social media networks.
According to Trump’s team Truth should be a rival "to the liberal media consortium and fight back against ‘Big Tech’ companies of Silicon Valley."
Others however, remained pessimistic, saying that the platform was meant to fail eventually, and is a threat to democracy.
Regardless, Truth Social managed to hit the top of the Apple App Store rankings for free apps a little over 12 hours after it debuted.