While Elon Musk was preparing his bid for Twitter, Truth Social, the network founded by former President Donald Trump after he was permanently banned from Twitter for his involvement in encouraging the January 6, 2021 insurgency, quietly rose to the top of the App Store rankings.
Truth Social, one of the most popular free iPhone apps on the App Store, has received the most downloads in the United States today. (Twitter comes in second.) Truth Social was ranked No. 52 as of Sunday, according to Mobile Insights Strategist Stephanie Chan of SensorTower, a mobile analytics firm, and Twitter was ranked No. 39.
On April 26, 2022, Tuesday Elon Musk made a tweet on Twitter claiming that The Truth Social App is leading the App Store and has beaten Twitter and TikTok.
The unexpected rise in downloads for Truth Social is most likely due to the platform’s technical issues being resolved. Even though Truth Social began in February 2022, people have been complaining about long waitlists until recently. Former congressman Devin Nunes, the company’s CEO, announced on Friday that the waitlists had been cleared when the site switched to Rumble, a new cloud provider.
The rise in downloads could also be linked to the former president’s recent utterances. Trump told Americano Media earlier this month that he would probably not return to Twitter, despite Musk’s interest in purchasing the platform. “Twitter has become boring.” “They’ve gotten rid of a lot of their conservative voices on Twitter,” Trump told Americano Media. Following the announcement of Musk’s purchase on Monday, Trump went on Fox News to say that he would not be returning to Twitter—even if Musk allows him to—and that he would instead stay on Truth. The app reached the top of the rankings on Tuesday.
Since its premiere in February 2022, Chan claims that Truth has been downloaded over 1.4 million times.
Truth Social bills itself as a platform for free expression that promotes “open, free, and honest global dialogue without regard for political ideology,” but it seems to already have silenced at least one reporter. Taylor Lorenz of the Washington Post tweeted on Saturday that she had been suspended from Truth just a few days after revealing the name of the conservative Twitter account @LibsOfTikTok.
