Donald Trump, once known for his seemingly infinite, real-time posts on social media, has yet to post a single thing on TRUTH Social, the social media site he founded, besides a boilerplate welcome message.
The former president announced the new site, as well as its parent company, Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG), last October, after he was booted from social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, following the 6 January attack on the US Capitol.
“I created TRUTH Social … to stand up to the tyranny of Big Tech,” the former president said through his spokeswoman, who is still on Twitter, at the time. “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. I am excited to send out my first TRUTH on TRUTH Social very soon.”
So far, the only TRUTH users of the site have seen from Mr Trump was this message, from the network’s February beta test phase: "Get Ready! Your favorite President will see you soon!"
The relative silence of the site’s biggest star, who was surely hoping to migrate some of his nearly 90 million followers on Twitter to the conservative clone, appears to have contributed to waning enthusiasm among TRUTH Social users.
The site skyrocketed to the top of the app store after its launch on 20 February, but since then, users report being stuck for days on a massive waitlist that reportedly numbers more than 1 million people.
“I created my account within 5 minutes of it going live,” one Truth user complained on Twitter. “My email said my waitlist number was 25,021. I got up the next morning [and] it had jumped. And hasn’t moved in a week!”
“I’m losing interest in Truth,” another grumbled. “They never let anyone new in, so there’s not many people there.”
“I started at number 1800 or so,” another disappointed user said. “Now im 94k. And it’s not updating. I’m pretty much over it.”
The Independent reached out to TMTG for comment.
The company has said it has resolved performance issues.
"We have resolved the performance bottlenecks with new user registration and validation, and are working through the new user waitlist at an accelerated rate," TRUTH Social announced on Wednesday. “President will see you soon!"
The social networks woes are far from over though. After it was announced TMTG would go public via a special-purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, at a value of $3.5bn, the Securities and Exchange Commission began investigating the firm.
