While Elon Musk made his bid on TwitterAnother social media app has quietly moved to the top of the App Store rankings: Truth Social, the platform launched by former President Donald Trump after receiving a permanent ban from Twitter for its role in inciting the uprising on January 6, 2021
Among the best free iPhone apps available in the App Store, Truth Social has seen the most installations gathered in the US App Store today. (Twitter is No. 2.) According to Mobile Insights strategist Stephanie Chan of SensorTower, a mobile analytics firm, Truth was at No. 52 from Sunday – and Twitter was ranked No. 39.
The sudden increase in downloads for Truth Social probably has something to do with solving the platform’s technical issues. Although Truth Social was launched in February 2022, users had reported long waiting lists until quite recently. On Friday, the company’s CEO, former congressman Devin Nunes, announced that waiting lists had been cleared after the site moved to a new cloud provider, Rumble.
The rise in downloads may also have something to do with the former president’s recent statements. Earlier this month, on April 14, Trump told Americano Media that he would probably not return to Twitter although Musk expressed interest in buying the platform. “Twitter has become very boring. “They got rid of a lot of good voices on Twitter, a lot of their conservative voices,” Trump told Americano Media. Following the news of Musk’s purchase on Monday, Trump took to Fox News to declare that he would not return to Twitter – even if Musk lets him come back – and would stay on Truth. On Tuesday, the app came at the top of the rankings.
Chan estimates that Truth has been downloaded over 1.4 million times since its launch in February 2022.
Truth Social has marketed itself as a platform for free speech that encourages “open, free and honest global dialogue without discriminating against political ideology”, but it seems to have already silenced at least one reporter. On Saturday, the Washington Posts Taylor Lorenz tweeted that she was suspended from Truth just a few days after cover the identity behind a conservative Twitter account @LibsOfTikTok.