The announcement of Donald Trump’s social media platform is less than 24 hours old, but the problems are already piling up—including the possible hacking of Trump’s own account.
Truth Social isn’t formally scheduled to launch until the first quarter of 2022, but some people found a URL that allowed users to sign up anyway, and mischief makers have been wreaking havoc with the “donaldjtrump” account. It is, however, unclear if that was actually Trump’s account or if someone simply set up the account using the same handle that the former president previously used on Twitter.
Names of prominent political figures do not appear to be protected so far on Truth. Drew Harwell, a tech reporter for the Washington Post, noted he was able to secure an account under the name of “mikepence.” And Mikael Thalen, a writer for the Daily Dot, was able to secure the handle “donaldtrump.”
The public domain for what’s assumed to be Truth Social’s mobile beta has since been taken down. It’s likely that all accounts will be scrubbed before the live launch.
While being able to post under well-known names was certainly the most noticeable hiccup, there are plenty of other issues with the site that people have noted. For example:
- Trump’s social media site seemingly allows header and avatar images of up to 100 megabytes, which could result in some notable storage issues. (Twitter allows images only up to five megabytes.)
- One of the rules of the site bans “excessive use of capital letters.” Trump frequently posted in all caps before he was banned from Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Snapchat.
- Another rule bars users from disparaging the site, which would seem to run counter to the free speech mandate Trump alluded to when unveiling the site.
“I created TRUTH Social and TMTG to stand up to the tyranny of Big Tech,” Trump said in a press release. “We live in a world where the Taliban has a huge presence on Twitter, yet your favorite American president has been silenced. This is unacceptable.”
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