Trump’s Truth App Climbs to Top Spot in Apple Store on Release Day

Despite hiccups and sign-up issues, Donald Trump’s social app Truth became the top-downloaded free Apple store app after launching Monday.

The intelligence firm Sensor Tower said there were no preliminary download estimates yet, but the Twitter copycat apparently already gained at least 150,000 signups for its waitlist. It was leading Talking Ben the Dog, HBO Max, TikTok and YouTube as the top five free Apple store apps.

Truth Social is the latest release in a series of social apps aimed at providing alternatives to Big Tech platforms, whether that be Facebook or Twitter. Former president Trump was suspended from Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and a handful of other social media apps for violating their standards of conduct, and former Trump aide Jason Miller also started Gettr, which said it has 1.9 million daily users.

The Truth platform looks like Twitter’s layout, and it is aimed at providing a platform for conservative voices who feel their freedom of speech is not upheld by Twitter, Facebook-now-Meta and other channels.

Truth is currently available on the Apple app store but not for Androids or users outside of the country. Former Republican Congressman Devin Nunes, CEO of Trump Media & Technology Group, has said their goal is to be “fully operational” in the U.S. by end of March.

A comparison of alternative social networks shows that these apps are gaining traction, according to download data from Sensor Tower. Social networking site MeWe has reached more than 13 million global installs across both app stores. Parler, another social platform aimed at conservatives, reached around 11.3 million global installs to date, while Gettr has some 6.7 million global installs. Rumble, the video platform alternative to YouTube, has about 4.6 million installs.