Truth Social, the social media company backed by the 45th President of the United States, Donald Trump, was the most downloaded free app for iPhones on Tuesday, a day after Twitter accepted an offer from Elon Musk to buy the company.
The ‘top free apps’ section of the App Store in the US on Tuesday was topped by Truth Social, followed in second place by Twitter.
Both social networks saw their downloads skyrocket following Twitter’s announcement, with Truth ranking 52nd on the same list on Monday, and Twitter ranking 39th.
The world’s richest man, Elon Musk, succeeded in his bid to take over Twitter, which he called “the people’s digital town square”, after the company accepted his $44 billion buyout offer.
The CEO of Tesla, which had initially bought more than 9 percent of Twitter’s shares, launched a “best and final” buyout offer on April 14 at $54.20 per share.
Defender of free speech
The South African-born businessman, who is a big fan of the social network, has billed himself as a defender of free speech on the platform and now seems to be carrying that mission with his new purchase, though he has offered very few details as to what he is going to do.
“Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated,” the 50-year-old Musk tweeted, adding hearts, stars and rocket emojis.
🚀💫♥️ Yesss!!! ♥️💫🚀 pic.twitter.com/0T9HzUHuh6
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 25, 2022
Donald Trump won’t reactivate Twitter account
Speaking to Fox News, the 45th President of the US said he would prefer to use his own social network, Truth Social, as his only channel and that he would join it in the next seven days as planned.
“I am not going on Twitter, I am going to stay on Truth,” Trump told Fox News. “I hope Elon buys Twitter because he’ll make improvements to it and he is a good man, but I am going to be staying on Truth.”
Truth was launched last month and has been running on its new cloud service for the past few days, after being beta tested since February. Its CEO is former California legislator Devin Nunes.
We’re taking in millions of people, and what we’re finding is that the response on Truth is much better than being on Twitter,” Trump said. “Twitter has bots and fake accounts, and we are doing everything we can.”
Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat permanently suspended Trump’s accounts following the protests and storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
