Donald Trump’s out with his new app, Truth Social, and, to describe it in a few words, it’s more of an antisocial network.
At least that’s the story so far about the former president’s foray into tech via a sketchy investment vehicle, created by sketchy techies (who hide their names), run by executives whose supposed expertise in running such complex organizations is, you guessed it, sketchy.
Well, I guess it’s par for the course for any number of entrepreneurial efforts by golf-enthusiast Trump — from steaks to universities to bottled water — many of which have flamed out after much-touted rollouts. What’s special here is that the flameout has been the rollout.
The myriad glitches in Truth Social’s sign-up process when it said it was open for business on Monday — not coincidentally Presidents’ Day — are well documented. And to be fair, much of what happened is not altogether unusual for a new app with a lot of hype around it. But with Truth Social, it managed to be that and much, much more. Every step of the process, at least for me (and seemingly everyone on that other social media site), was a series of error messages, from the download to the sign-in, to the ability to recover a password, as I was running it through its paces.
That’s the reason I used my backup burner phone for the process, since it’s not connected with my personal digital life and works only on Wi-Fi. It’s the same process I used to download TikTok, due to its Chinese ownership, which I wrote about in 2020. My concerns for each are the same: 1. Possible security issues; 2. Possible privacy issues; 3. Likely invasive marketing schemes; and 4. Anything this cloaked in secrecy just gives me the willies. Truth Social inspires the same feeling I have about Facebook and, to a lesser extent, Google: I simply don’t trust it as a business that will protect its own consumers.
The wait list aspect — it seems most people can’t even use the service — was particularly odd. First, I was informed that though they “loved” me, I was number 249,495 in line. Then, I mysteriously rose to 169,495 before, poof!, I was back at 249,495. Whether it was actually a marketing gambit to give the appearance of popularity or was simply technological incompetence, it was a flashing red signal of the kind of high jinks I feared would come from Trump’s people. While one might assume the Apple folks gave it a good once over before allowing it to be in the App Store — where it is now the No. 1 free download in the US, ahead of big names like TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and Facebook — I remain in “buyer beware” mode. Better safe than sorry with the data hungry, which is why I used slightly inaccurate personal information.
Truth Social execs said it will all be fixed by the end of March, but we’ll see if there’s any truth in that advertising.
Also weird: Someone had already taken @karaswisher, which is an uncommon name. Why? Who knows! Perhaps Truth Social is setting it aside for me — as the competing conservative social media app Gettr did — or perhaps Laura Ingraham is cosplaying me.
All kidding aside, the real test will be when the service has been running for a bit, apparently in April, when users can kick the tires. The sign-up process is one thing, but keeping users consistently engaged and posting quality content is another thing entirely. Photos I’ve seen suggest Truth Social is effectively a Twitter clone with, in some ways, even stricter moderation rules (so much for free speech!). There don’t seem to be any special innovations beyond a marketing slogan of being “America’s ‘Big Tent’ social media platform that encourages an open, free, and honest global conversation without discriminating against political ideology.”
Lofty. But like anything else, only fresh features and the buzz they create can make it a successful platform, since the excitement of round-the-clock trolling by the former president is sure to wear off. I’ve seen it before, to be a winner in tech requires more than providing a stage for bloviating, endless scream fests and stunt posting. You’ve got to get busy being either useful, entertaining or unique — and being all three is the golden goal.
Truth Social is already playing catch-up in the right-leaning social media behind Gettr, Rumble, Parler, MeWe and others. So it had better get better, fast. That’s hardly a given here, even with Trump’s backing, since they are all fighting for a relatively small pool of consumers. (I mean, there is only so much Dinesh D’Souza nonsense to go around.)
Wall Street, however, didn’t seem to mind the mess. Digital World Acquisition, the special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, that Trump Media is set to merge with, saw its shares up 14 percent after the Truth Social debut. This, despite an ongoing investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission that could stop the SPAC transaction and deny Trump Media access to some $1.3 billion in cash.
But let’s face it, Trump clearly still pines for Twitter, his greatest digital love, a relationship that is now unrequited. While he has been tweet-banished, I would lay good money down on a bet that he would run right back to his old stomping ground — emphasis on stomp — if he were given the opportunity, leaving Truth Social without a backward glance.
4 Questions
This week I caught up with Liza Donnelly, whose new book “Very Funny Ladies,” about women cartoonists for The New Yorker, will be published next month. But rather than my tried-and-true question and answer format, I asked Donnelly, herself a cartoonist, to lean into her sketching talents and answer my queries with her drafting pen. No editing needed this week.
Your book is titled “Very Funny Ladies,” which they are. But I would love to know why we need to differentiate women and men when it comes to cartooning, since it does not, say, require a feat of physical strength to pick up a pen or pencil. In other words, what are the unique challenges women face in cartooning?
It feels like a much less funny world now, but maybe that’s just me. What has changed in cartooning for you and how you conceive of your work?
I would be remiss if I didn’t ask how the shift to digital has impacted your craft, not only in how you make what you make. Is it easier for people to break through? Is there a creator community as there is on TikTok and Instagram?
What do you imagine cartooning will be like in the metaverse, since everyone kind of looks like a cartoon version of themselves? Is there anything you have seen that strikes you as good? Bad?
Lovely & Loathsome
Lovely: Apple’s TV division deserves kudos for the new series from Ben Stiller’s production company called “Severance.” Its plot is all sci-fi and dystopian tech, in which corporate employees have their brains “severed,” bifurcating work and personal lives so their knowledge and memories of their workplace are unavailable to them after they clock out. There is so much going on in this show — including its stellar cast — which is visually sterile and hints at a real-life metaverse in which workers are imprisoned by choice, in part to avoid thinking about the consequences of some very dastardly work they are doing and to forget their various turmoils at home for eight ignorant hours. It’s also full of video surveillance nightmares that cast tech in a less than flattering light. As we rethink our post-pandemic relationship to work and try to figure out how to be less isolated as we grow more separated, this is a must watch. Don’t miss the indignity of the melon buffet.
Loathsome: If you don’t think there is a bright line between the increasingly hateful rhetoric by the right wing against the trans and L.G.B.T.Q. communities, and, led by Trump, the strident and bizarre-even-for-them support of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin — then you aren’t paying attention online. There, this perpetually aggrieved gang have attempted to link at-home hot-button issues like cancel culture and gender concerns with the fact that Putin himself has not done these things. That’s right, he did not take your parking space, so lay off! It’s a specious and mystifying, but, ultimately, effective technique now on continuous loop on the usual digital platforms. A particularly loathsome version was on display in a recent exchange between uber-conservative operatives Steve Bannon and Erik Prince on Bannon’s “War Room” podcast available on Apple and other platforms, after being pulled from some, such as YouTube. Like the Omicron variant, these fetid messages spread with virulence among the mentally unvaccinated to gin up base rage. These people never went away the last time they tried to spew such hatred, but now they have better tech weapons and a lot more power to reach people. Stopping such rhetoric is not the point — it’s far too late for that. But it is essential that we understand how such antipathy grows and latches on to other memes online, like anti-vaccine campaigns and election fraud lies. That’s especially true if you are one of the main distributors of the content and, for instance, a gay C.E.O. of the most valuable and powerful tech company in the world like, say, Tim Cook.
