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Donald Trump: Online Trolls Pounce on Truth Social

2021-10-22T10:34:49.576Z


With Truth Social, Donald Trump wants to build his own social media network. But long before the official start there was a kind of involuntary open day.


Enlarge image

Trump network Truth Social: It won't officially start until 2022

Photo: CHRIS DELMAS / AFP

Donald Trump lost his most important social media channels after the storm on the US Capitol.

And his subsequent blogger career ended as suddenly as it began.

But anyone who has ever been the most highly regarded Twitter user in the world wants to continue to raise their voices in debates: On Wednesday, Trump announced that he would soon want to stir up the social media world with a network called Truth Social.

The aim is to "stand up to the tyranny of Big Tech," said the ex-president.

It remains to be seen whether this can succeed or whether Truth Social threatens an eternal niche existence in the shadow of Twitter, Facebook or TikTok.

The network will officially not start until 2022, with a test version initially announced for November.

However, resourceful users have already managed to easily register for pre-release versions of the service via public links.

It also immediately became clear that not only Trump fans will be interested in Truth Social: The name of the American ex-president is also likely to attract internet trolls and experimental reporters, for whom every new network is a new online playground, or at least one Space they want to watch.

The first open day in Trump's new digital home took place on Thursday.

Trump account with pig photo

If you orient yourself on the screenshots that are circulating, it was obviously wild. On the account @donaldjtrump, for example, someone unknown posted a photo of a pig that has just emptied its bowels. Likewise, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey received a "Fuck you" from that account, whereupon an @jack account replied, "Well, I'm not sure what I was expecting."

When creating new accounts, there were apparently hardly any limits to the creativity of the uninvited visitors: Drew Harwell, for example, a journalist for the Washington Post, called himself @mikepence on Truth Social, referring to the former Vice President of the USA. And Mikael Thalen from "The Daily Dot" was, according to his own account, @donaldtrump, at least until the test environment was finally taken offline by the operators. Later, however, another test version of Truth Social was discovered, apparently again without any notable technical protection.

It is doubtful that Trump's service for the regular test phase in November will be more professional. For example, "Vice" reports that the service is based on Mastodon, an open source software that can be used to set up social networks. At the same time, the terms of use of the Trump network are said to have said that the entire source code of the site is protected by copyright - which, according to "Vice" and Mastodon founder Eugen Rochko, could constitute a violation of the rules of use for the software.

On Thursday there was also criticism that Truth Social was advertised in Apple's App Store with alleged accounts of well-known brands such as the New York Times, Variety and ESPN, although these are presumably not official presences of those brands.

Truth Social does not seem to take the truth very seriously.

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Source: spiegel

All tech articles on 2021-10-22

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