Donald Trump, now a 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.
Read: Donald Trump Starts 'Tweeting' Again 'From The Desk Of Donald J. Trump'
Trump’s team said Truth should be a rival "to the liberal media consortium and fight back against ‘Big Tech’ companies of Silicon Valley."
Trump even established an entity for this venture called Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG).
The app description on app store reads that it’s a social network that encourages "open, free, and honest global conversation without discriminating against political ideology."
Initially, the social media network was launched to only a limited number of users on Apple's App Store.
In November, it was revealed that the company has received a billion dollars from investors.
In a press release, the former U.S. President’s social network said that the funding came from a “diverse group of institutional investors,” without disclosing any names.
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 is reportedly valued at $4 billion.
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.
Others however, remained pessimistic, saying that the platform was meant to fail eventually, and is a threat to democracy.
It's worth noting that initially, hours after the press release, hackers managed to discover domains related to the company, and managed to troll on the site, creating parody accounts, and posting humorous and comedic content. Users were able to sign up with usernames of high-profile individuals, including Donald Trump.
It took a while before the issue was resolved.