Former American President Donald Trump has announced that he will set up his own social network called "Truth Social" to compete with the "liberal media cartel" and to fight the technology giants of Silicon Valley.
These would use their power unilaterally to silence opposition voices, the announcement on Wednesday said.
Winand von Petersdorff-Campen
Business correspondent in Washington.
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Trump has not been allowed to use Facebook, Twitter and other social platforms to spread his messages for nine months because, according to the operating companies, he fueled the storm on the Capitol with his statements.
Before he was banned, Trump had 89 million followers on Twitter alone.
“I created 'TRUTH Social' to defy the tyranny of tech giants.
We live in a world in which the Taliban has a large presence on Twitter, but your favorite president has been muted, ”Trump is quoted as saying in the press release.
That is not acceptable.
He will be sending out his first "truth" shortly and is therefore very excited.
Trump recently filed a lawsuit against Twitter with the aim of having his user account reactivated.
$ 300 million available
"Truth Social" already has a symbol in the app store and can be pre-ordered there.
The activation is planned for February 22nd of the coming year, a test version is to be made available to invited customers in the coming month.
The financing has been secured for the time being, although it seems a bit fragile: The Trump Media & Technology Group, founded by the former president for this purpose, is merging with a listed company called the Digital World Acquisition Group. In technical jargon, such companies that have become very fashionable are called “special-purpose acquisition companies” or SPAC. These are shell companies that have raised investor capital and pursue the purpose of taking over promising companies and giving them accelerated access to the stock market.
Digital World has nearly $ 300 million to pay for the expansion. However, the investors have the right to call up the money if they do not like the acquisition target. Such investor repayments have peaked in the past few months after many of the companies acquired missed their targets.
If the transaction is successful, Trump Media & Technology Group would be a publicly traded company.
It claims its own initial enterprise value at $ 875 million, which could double to $ 1.7 billion.
However, this sum is based on unspecified price developments of a share that has not even been listed on the stock exchange.
The shell company is betting on being able to monetize Trump's large following, SPAC boss Patrick Orlando makes clear.