Trump set to launch own social media site

NEW YORK — Nine months after being expelled from social media for his role in inciting the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection, former President Donald Trump said he’s launching a new media company with its own social media platform.

Trump says his goal in launching the Trump Media & Technology Group and its “Truth Social” app is to create a rival to the Big Tech companies that have shut him out and denied him the megaphone that was paramount to his national rise.

Conservative voices do well on traditional social media.

On Wednesday, half of Facebook’s 10 top performing link posts were from conservative media, commentators or politicians, according to a daily list compiled by a New York Times technology columnist and an internet studies professor using Facebook’s own data.

Trump has spoken about launching his own social media site ever since he was barred from Twitter and Facebook. An earlier effort to launch a blog on his existing website was abandoned after the page drew dismal views.

In addition to the Truth Social app, which is expected to soft-launch next month with a nationwide rollout early next year, the company says it is planning a video-ondemand service dubbed TMTG+ that will feature entertainment programming, news and podcasts.

Truth Social’s terms of service bar users from annoying any of the site’s employees and from statements that “disparage, tarnish, or otherwise harm, in our opinion, us and/ or the Site.”

The new venture said it had been created through a merger with Digital World Acquisition Corp.