Troubled Trump app Truth Social goes down for hours with series of outages

It was the ‘worst I’ve ever seen it,’ one user wrote.

Vishwam Sankaran
Tuesday 19 April 2022 13:24 BST
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Truth Social
Truth Social (AFP via Getty Images)

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Former US president Donald Trump’s new social media platform Truth Social was down for hours on Monday after being hit with a series of outages.

Outages were reported from just after 7am EST to around 3.30pm, according to DownDetector.

As the outages fell drastically following 3.30pm, users flooded the social media platform with complaints.

The most-reported complaints came from users of the Truth Social app according to DownDetector.

“It was terrible this morning,” one user wrote, responding to the outage, according to The Daily Beast.

Another user reportedly said it was the “worst I’ve ever seen it.”

Users reported that they saw a “loading” page, and couldn’t access any of the platform’s already limited features during the outage.

“Our team has been working non stop to ensure that Truth can not be shut down by tech tyrants,” Republican congressman turned Truth Social CEO Devin Nunes said following the outage.

“Today… we begin implementing major upgrades to the platform over the next few weeks,” he said.

Mr Trump had announced the launch of the app to engage with his followers after he was banned from most social media networks, including Twitter and Facebook, in the aftermath of the Capitol riots on 6 January 2021.

The app was launched in February in what the former US president described as an effort to “fight back against Big Tech.”

But the platform has struggled to gain momentum following a series of early misfires.

Earlier this month, critics had dubbed the social media platform a “disaster” after daily downloads declined nearly 95 per cent since its February launch.

It has remained an app most people still cannot use due to its long waiting list, and several users have complained on Twitter that it has taken weeks for them to be granted access to the app.

Two top executives working on the platform resigned earlier this month just before a critical phase in the platform’s life was set to kick off.

Josh Adams and Billy Boozer, Truth Social’s chiefs of technology and product development, stepped down due to mishaps in the platforms launch and a lack of interest from Mr Trump himself, according to Reuters.

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