Talk:Truth Social

Suspended Accounts

A lot of people are having their accounts suspended for even mentioning the terrorist insurrection that took place on Jan. 6, as well as the current hearings being held to show how Trump and other traitors used it to try to steal an election. This is something that should be covered on the Wiki article, as a site called Truth Social is going out of its way to hide the truth socially. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.196.162.105 (talk) 16:39, 10 June 2022 (UTC)

Request for page protection

A request for page protection has been made due to the high level of IP and SPA vandalism. --Kbabej (talk) 15:30, 21 October 2021 (UTC)

The request for page protection has been granted and it will be protected for a period of one year. --Kbabej (talk) 16:15, 21 October 2021 (UTC)

This is debatable based on political ideology. Stogersen (talk) 22:07, 21 October 2021 (UTC)

Requests for page protection or unprotection can be made at WP:RFPP. GorillaWarfare (she/her • talk) 22:08, 21 October 2021 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 21 October 2021

‘So called attack.’ 2601:82:C004:9CB0:0:0:0:455B (talk) 22:04, 21 October 2021 (UTC)

 Not done: We are using the wording chosen at 2021 United States Capitol attack through much discussion. GorillaWarfare (she/her • talk) 22:06, 21 October 2021 (UTC)

License Violation (AGPLv3)

They're not required to distribute the source code until such time as they release the app (and even then, the requirement is they provide it if requested - not that it's "published" as such). So any talk about a license violation is speculative at this point. Valgrus Thunderaxe (talk) 07:27, 22 October 2021 (UTC)

Consider this retracted, because Mastodon is using AGPL not GPLv3, which seems to require modifications be made available in the case the software is used in any capacity, not just "released" in binary form. Valgrus Thunderaxe (talk) 07:53, 22 October 2021 (UTC)

The details of the above discussion are moot. A properly cited, strictly factual account of the potential AGPLv3 license violation has already been added by User:Perey to the History section. If the TMTG eventually complies with the license, the entire issue will be moot and perhaps of such minor consequence that it may not be worth keeping in future versions of this page.Lapabc (talk) 19:14, 23 October 2021 (UTC)

Considering that even the beta version of the page has not been released yet, only a couple of test versions have been accessible to a very limited number of people, this "License Violation" discussion is nothing but blind speculations so far. While the test sites might possible have had some placeholder elements from the Mastodon code, there is no reason to assume that the official page will not be entirely based on original/proprietary code. Therefore those accusations of "license violation" shouldn't be included in the article. BreakingZews (talk) 14:30, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

The point is that they have already violated the license with the test version - there is nothing in the AGPL about license violations applying only to production ready code. If they conform with the license by 30 days after notification, or replace it with non-Mastodon based code, then that is the time to delete that part of the section. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:1C0:CA01:B00:7A24:AFFF:FE33:66AF (talk) 07:24, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

maybe they're using the 2016 version of mastodon under gpl Slinkyw (talk) 21:41, 26 November 2021 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 23 October 2021

The whole thing is full of errors...the site From the desk of the 45th President page is still being used and he still makes press releases on it. No hacks have occurred because while you can sign up to be one of the ones to be in the beta the system and servers are not up yet. Jan. 6th protest was not deadly by the protesters. Rabbit was complying to what an officwr told her and was shot by another officer in the back. Get rid of clowns writing fake information, sighting fake news stories. 52.144.111.247 (talk) 03:23, 23 October 2021 (UTC)

 Not done. "the request must be of the form "please change X to Y"." Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 03:41, 23 October 2021 (UTC)

The anonymous commenter has a point about the blog From the desk of the 45th President. This article quoted news sources saying it was shut down, but in fact it is still operational and anyone can navigate to that site and see for oneself. I modified that sentence in question to reflect accurate June 2021 point-in-time news reports, adding an additional news source citation, but to also accurately reflect the current state of a live and active website in the Fall 2021. The other comments are not in a form that can be accurately addressed.Lapabc (talk) 19:52, 23 October 2021 (UTC)

We need a secondary RS for that. @Lapabc: in case you were not already aware, the New York Post is considered a generally unreliable source (RSP entry). GorillaWarfare (she/her • talk) 21:32, 23 October 2021 (UTC)

Since about September 2021, the site is only updated about every 2-6 days. Even though the dates on the posts themselves SUGGEST daily updates, that is in fact not the case. Whether that qualifies as a "live and active" website thus then becomes a matter of opinion. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:8003:E422:3C01:85A:DD8A:8283:8A61 (talk) 10:33, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

You are correct in reverting the sentence back to the original. The anonymous commenter apparently got spoofed, and so did I when I followed up. The source for the original complaint and subsequent edit was not a news report but the site itself: https://thedeskofdonaldtrump.com/ It's live and it's distinct from Trump's Save America website. Or so it seems. On the day of my edit, the browser I happened to be in was Edge, whose default search is Bing, and this site was a top hit. But in looking back today in Chrome whose default is Google, the same search terms fail to turn up the site in the first 90 hits before I gave up. The site's "About" section seemed superficially okay and clicking on its links takes one to Save America. But this site's URL lacks the word "From" which I didn't notice the first time. So while these posts are legitimately from Trump, the site itself appears to be a third party effort. (As for the NY Post, the only time I ever actually look at it is if I happen to be in NYC and found it left by someone on the seat of a train, and even then I flip it to the back for brash coverage of NY sports teams not for its journalism, LOL.) Lapabc (talk) 17:13, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

Reception

" Chris Cillizza of CNN wrote that the platform was doomed to fail. " How can CNN possibly be considered a reliable, neutral source on anything related to Trump?? ₪ Encyclopædius 07:18, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

I would ask why the "reception" section is here at all. It's not released. Why include rife speculation? (some people will love it, some people will hate it, shocking and encylopedia worthy!!!) 76.11.168.118 (talk) 16:30, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

The same goes for reference 27 from Noah Berlatsky, "Trump's 'Truth Social' could be more of a threat to democracy than it looks". Why is any credence given to one person's opinion, especially when discussing a topic like something being a threat to democracy? That's no small threat! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 144.51.12.38 (talk) 19:28, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

Because all the comments here are about the article's Reception section, I changed the label here from the original "CNN" to a broader "Reception." As for addressing the actual comments, first, CNN is considered to be a reliable source. For more WP information in general, see this: Reliable Sources and this: Generally Reliable, and for CNN specifically see this: Perennial sources: CNN. Second, many WP pages have a "Reception" section and there is no reason to exclude that here. Third, it is true that there will be pros and cons, but currently the section consists of several stand alone sentences in random order. So without modifying any original statements I simply reorganized them into pro and con paragraphs to make things coherent. In my opinion, the sentence referencing Rolling Stone is superfluous and should be deleted, but I leave that to others. Lapabc (talk) 18:28, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

Trump's Twitter shouldn't be referred to as "canceled", it was removed and he was banned. Cancel is either being used as slang or is being used incorrectly here.24.92.38.147 (talk) 21:12, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

I've changed that mention to "permanently banned" --ZimZalaBim ^talk 21:21, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

Truth Social partners with Rumble

Shouldn't someone add in that Truth Social is doing a partnership with Rumble? 2604:CB00:136:B300:4402:FB86:1433:64EA (talk) 12:24, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

 Done. - Tuckerlieberman (talk) 18:00, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

References

He has 3.1 million followers as of right now. Main article still makes it look like only a few 100k. Don't believe in disinformation on here do we????? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 137.103.147.195 (talk) 02:39, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

New date for full launch

In an interview with Fox News, Trump stated that the full launch will now be "first quarter of 2022". Whether coming from his own mouth on Fox News constitutes a "reliable source", I couldnt possibly say. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:8003:E422:3C01:35B0:7B37:D701:9FD6 (talk) 04:03, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

He's been saying the full launch would be in early 2022 ever since the TMTG press release on October 20, 2021, which we already cite in this article. In that October press release, he also said the app would enter limited beta on the Apple App store in November 2021, which still has not happened. So it seems that the company is two months behind schedule. To me, it casts doubt on whether he's going to meet his original (purported) schedule of first-quarter 2022 for the full launch. - Tuckerlieberman (talk) 18:01, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Update lede?

The lede says: "Originally, a limited launch was planned on Apple's App Store in November 2021, and a full public launch in 2022." I suggest deleting this sentence entirely from the lede. The information is valuable, but an essentially identical sentence exists (along with the same 2 citations) in the "History" section, so I don't think we also need it in the lede. To speak frankly -- though this is clearly my own judgment intruding here -- Truth Social looks every day more like another of Trump's business failures, fakery, and lies. I don't see value in continuing to parrot Trump and cheerlead for "planned [for] November 2021[!]" when he didn't meet his own deadline. I think it would convey more useful information to state that this is an as-yet-nonexistent product that has somehow achieved an implicit valuation of $10 billion on the stock market. The unusual behavior of investors, as well as of a Congressperson resigning to become CEO, is the real story here. - Tuckerlieberman (talk) 17:55, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

 Done I went ahead and made the change to the lede. Deleted 1 sentence, added 2 different sentences. - Tuckerlieberman (talk) 18:29, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 13 February 2022

Truth social is not launching on February 21, 2022. It’s set to launch the end of March. 173.49.237.32 (talk) 18:22, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

 Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 18:28, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

Heavy left-wing bias in page wording

This article uses heavily left-leaning language. There is clearly a bias towards negatively portraying the topic covered. The wording should be changed to be more neutral. 76.71.105.29 (talk) 09:58, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

We only publish what reliable sources have said about it. This determines the wording, as well. Symmachus Auxiliarus (talk) 20:10, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

Reliable sources might still use non-neutral wording, especially when the said reliable sources have a certain political leaning. In such a case, editors who add the content should neutralize the wording to make it conform to the core content policy WP:NPOV. --Matt Smith (talk) 07:59, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

Truth social media

This app is made for free speech over censorship. This app gives its users the freedom to talk politically, religious beliefs and other things, that people might not be able to do on other platforms. 173.69.14.146 (talk) 03:08, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

Right-wing news sources are avoided on Wikipedia. Slashlefty (talk) 09:45, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

What about left-wing news sources? Are they avoided as well? Pikemaster (talk) 14:40, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

Partisan sources, left or right, are less likely to be regarded as reliable sources for Wikipedia's purposes unless they have shown a reliable track record for fact-checking and accurate reporting. See WP:RS. -- The Anome (talk) 17:22, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

Infrastructure

Interestingly, in spite of reports about RightForge and Rumble, the Truth Social service seems to rely on established players for at least some of its crucial infrastructure: the domain truthsocial.com appears to be registered with Tucows, and the www.truthsocial.com FQDN currently appears to be a CNAME for www.truthsocial.com.cdn.cloudflare.net., which points to address space controlled to Cloudflare, who are presumably providing anti-DDoS services. I can't see any reports of this in WP:RS anywhere. -- The Anome (talk) 17:37, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

Antisemitism and racism

We should include the likelihood of mass amounts of antisemitism, racism, bigotry, and defense of the worst atrocity the world has ever seen: the Jan 6th coup at the Capitol. Innican Soufou (talk) 14:19, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

No, we don't include liklihoods. If there is reliable reporting of such content, then perhaps it would be mentioned. --ZimZalaBim ^talk 14:26, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

I agree with ZimZalaBim. Artemaeus Creed (talk) 16:56, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

I agree January 6th was wrong and terrible but far from the worst atrocity the world has ever seen. I can think of about 50 other world events that would top that. BlackBird1008 (talk) 17:06, 27 February 2022 (UTC)

still based on mastadon?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth_Social#cite_note-20 (https://uk.pcmag.com/social-media/137421/trumps-social-media-site-quietly-admits-its-based-on-mastodon) links to https://truthsocial.com/open-source/ which 404s now

the announcement section notes "Truth Social is based on Mastodon" where as software section states "As of October 2021, while the Truth Social platform was still in development, it used a custom version of the free and open-source social network hosting software Mastodon"

does anyone know if the use of mastadon is a present or past tense thing? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Briaguya (talk • contribs) 14:39, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

It would be fascinating to know. As would their approach toward scaling front-end worker processes, and -- the really difficult one -- their back-end storage and database, without access to something like AWS. Scaling from 500 beta testers to hundreds of thousands of users is not a simple task; just throwing hundreds of times the amount of hardware at it will not suffice unless you've got the architecture just right. And then there are the nightmarish problems of content moderation at scale to deal with. -- The Anome (talk) 15:39, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

I agree with User:The_Anome. Without having any specific knowledge about Truth_Social but knowing about IT systems I can say it is unbelievable that they would be able to change the complete backend technology while having a significant userbase and while growing. Also something like this doesn't happen from one day to another. I would not pay any attention to such claims until it's proven they developed a whole backend by themselves GavriilaDmitriev (talk) 20:30, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

Yes. Architecting, building and testing such a system from scratch would be a huge task, even if you have experience with Mastodon to use as inspiration, and would take a long time no matter how much money you had to throw at it (see The Mythical Man-Month). Just load-testing it would be a massive task on its own; perhaps you'd get your testing team to pummel it with AWS-hosted bot traffic? And then there's fuzzing, pentesting and other security work. -- The Anome (talk) 20:58, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

It is still based on Mastodon. New src link is here. https://help.truthsocial.com/open-source/ 199.46.249.143 (talk) 20:39, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

Got it. Archive copy: https://web.archive.org/web/20220223041952/https://help.truthsocial.com/open-source/ , and https://web.archive.org/web/20220223041943/https://opensource.truthsocial.com/mastodon-current.zip for the source. -- The Anome (talk) 20:52, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

I get a "Access denied". Is it because I use a VPN? GavriilaDmitriev (talk) 05:15, 24 February 2022 (UTC)

They seem to be using Cloudflare to filter requests: at a guess, this is probably an IP block to restrict access to U.S./Canadian users only; in which case you expect VPNs to be blocked, as they are typically used to try to avoid exactly this kind of blocking. Cloudflare are pretty good at this. -- The Anome (talk) 17:23, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

Lack of review coverage

It's interesting that there is very little coverage of what Truth Social is actually like for users; just pre-launch speculation, and reports of problems with the roll-out. Have any journalists actually been able to get accounts to get online and write about their experience on the platform? Or is the roll-out still going so badly that none of them can? -- The Anome (talk) 17:30, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

Here we have something: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/feb/26/donald-trump-truth-social-launch . Waitlist was approximately 600,000, and 50,000 Trump followers, Thursday and Wednesday respectively. So (assuming the followers are actually real) at least some users are online. Trump had 88 million followers on Twitter, so this is about 0.06% the size of his previous "megaphone". In a month or so there might be more clarity about the platform's real chances for success, when (if?) they sort their scaling problems. I wonder if they will try to pivot to hosting on AWS/GCP/Azure? -- The Anome (talk) 09:37, 27 February 2022 (UTC)

I also had wondered whether any journalists had gotten accounts. Now I see one who has written a politico.com article: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/03/05/truth-social-emptiness-donald-trump-00014355. -- 100.36.97.67 (talk) 17:01, 5 March 2022 (UTC)

Thanks. It looks like journalists are now finally getting access to the platform and reporting on it properly. -- The Anome (talk) 13:00, 6 March 2022 (UTC)

Reporting on the topic seems to have largely ceased in the last couple of weeks, probably because there is nothing new or interesting to be said on the matter. Presumably WP:RS will start reporting on it again if it either starts to pick up, or tanks even further. — The Anome (talk) 11:30, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 6 March 2022

In the section "Technology", subsection "Software", the names of posts and reposts are written in all lower-case letters. In the Washington Post article already cited in the Wikipedia article, they are written "Truth" and "ReTruth". This convention is followed on https://help.truthsocial.com/ and is also used in the Politico article https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/03/05/truth-social-emptiness-donald-trump-00014355. The Washington Post article also uses "Truth Feed", but I could not find any other reference to that. Please change the names of posts and reposts to be "Truths" and "ReTruths". -- 100.36.97.67 (talk) 21:17, 6 March 2022 (UTC)

Now I notice that the Washington Post article has "Re-Truth" with a hyphen (and is not consistent), but the other sources do not have the hyphen. -- 100.36.97.67 (talk) 21:25, 6 March 2022 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 10 March 2022

Change perservere to persevere (section "Post Launch") 195.48.34.249 (talk) 14:55, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

 Done soibangla (talk) 15:05, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

... "From the Desk of Donald J. Trump" ... USA Today reported in early June that it was shut down after less than a month.... THIS IS NOT TRUE.

USA Today may well have reported that, but it is not true. There are frequent posts, which are almost exclusively either "statements", or endorsements of political candidates, or ICYMI links to stories elsewhere. The dates on the posts SUGGEST that they are posted on an almost daily basis (sometimes several a day), but that is not the case - they are posted, in batches, about once a week. As of late March 2022, that is still the case.

You dont need to take my word for it. Go look for yourself. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:8003:E48C:E601:1110:120D:6729:1E7C (talk) 08:26, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

The URL now redirects to a page to sign up for "alerts": From the Desk of Donald J. Trump. Trump's spokespersons told the news media last summer the feature was discontinued. -- M.boli (talk) 18:09, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

This link takes you straight to the news: https://www.donaldjtrump.com/news . I am there NOW. Plenty of current posts there. Yes, there is an overlay page to sign up for alerts, but you simply close it and the news is there. 2001:8003:E48C:E601:CCE8:2110:3614:141A (talk) 01:51, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

If you go to the old https://www.donaldjtrump.com/desk link, it now redirects to https://www.donaldjtrump.com/alerts which has a pop-up overlay asking you to sign up for alerts. If you attempt to dismiss the pop-up, it reveals a page this is still asking to you to sign up for alerts. If, instead, you navigate to https://www.donaldjtrump.com/news , it will still show you the same pop-up, but will now reveal a page containing an index of blog-post-like "news alerts". However, this is no longer branded as "From the Desk of Donald J. Trump".

I'd tend to go with USA Today on this; the link is dead, and the name is gone, and with it the idea of "From the Desk of Donald J. Trump" as a "platform". — The Anome (talk) 10:35, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

I feel like I'm in an episode of Twilight Zone, where everyone is telling me the opposite of what my lying eyes show me. The site is certainly NOT dead. It is updated every several days. As in, it was update today, as I wrote this.

I can only repeat what I said before, but that seems pointless. Yes, as a "platform" it may be gone, but the site is certainly "active" and has new stuff on it all the time. Like ... today. The URL is still https://www.donaldjtrump.com/news . Yes, it is no longer branded as "From the desk of". but it it still the same URL and thus the same site. Are you saying that the branding is more important? That makes all the difference? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:8003:E48C:E601:B05D:6B8:B966:6D4A (talk) 09:28, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

FTDODJT was a venue for the writings and video of Trump. It was described as a venue for Trump to communicate with his followers (having been banned from twitter), which he did during its brief existence. Trump's web site also contains press releases and posts from his communications team, mixed with short "statements" from Trump. These news posts predated FTDODJT, continue after FTDODJT, and I presume continued even during the brief existence of FTDODJT. I get your point that Trumpists can get their fix from this web site. But for whatever reason, Trump's media team killed off FTDODJT. -- M.boli (talk) 20:42, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

Scaling problems: some possible insight

I think it's clear now that the scaling problems are a persistent phenomenon, and I have amended the lede to reflect this.

This post on Hacker News circa 2nd April may provide some clues about their current woes. Take-away quote: "A current scaling challenge is database and data caching infrastructure". The poster then goes on to say that they are "making extensive use of Postgres in multi-site replica environment" and also namecheck Redis, KeyDB (a Redis fork, see [1]), Cassandra, and RabbitMQ. More or less the same thing is also posted here.

Unfortunately, even if true, this is unverified first-party info, and I can as yet find no information in WP:RS to cite to support it. But let's watch this space. — The Anome (talk) 11:29, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

Looks like they are trying to upgrade things now, based on the recent outage: [2]. Upgrading a live system on-the-fly is hard. — The Anome (talk) 11:10, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

Here they go with the promised upgrades: [3] — My best guess is that this is a read-only moment to allow moving the database from one provider to another, in this case the Rumble cloud platform, as also announced yesterday. — The Anome (talk) 17:26, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

Unknown random person created dumb account on public visible pre-launch site is hardly encyclopedia-worthy content

The last paragraph of the pre-launch section, an unknown person posted something about Pinochet on the test version of the site, tells us nothing about Truth Social. It doesn't belong in an encyclopedia article. Somebody properly reverted it, somebody else put it back. And then it has been fixed up to be more accurate. But I think a better fix is to delete it. -- M.boli (talk) 21:31, 19 April 2022 (UTC)

Agreed, I have removed it. Endwise (talk) 02:03, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

Is this relevant for the article?

I read the following on Fox News. SpaceX CEO and new Twitter owner Elon Musk took to his new platform to point out that Truth Social has passed Twitter on a ranking of Top Free Apps in Apple’s app store.

"Truth Social is currently beating Twitter & TikTok on the Apple Store," Musk tweeted, which was swiftly "liked" by nearly 80,000 users.

He shared a ranking from AppFigures.com, showing Truth Social ahead of Twitter and TikTok.

Here is the link https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/elon-musk-shade-truth-social-passes-twitter-app-store

Paige Matheson (talk) 13:08, 27 April 2022 (UTC)

It's mentioned in the article that the network has struggled with scaling up, so this seems worth a mention. High popularity is certainly noteworthy. Thanks ツ Jenova20 ^(email) 14:46, 27 April 2022 (UTC)

It is indeed notable, and I've added it to the article. It seems clear that Truth Social would have a much larger user base than it does right now if it could actually scale to accommodate them; however, doing that is something which is substantially harder than merely throwing compute resources at the problem. Let's see what happens. — The Anome (talk) 07:44, 28 April 2022 (UTC)

With the resources available from backers it's surprising. If they had the server capacity to take more users it's likely they could have capitalised on the Twitter turmoil quite well. You don't get an opportunity like this every day. I think they've now missed the best shot at user growth they're likely to get anytime soon. There exists the possibility that they only ever wanted to have the capacity for US users though, and there's evidence for this - but this is speculation of course. Thanks ツ Jenova20 ^(email) 09:30, 28 April 2022 (UTC)

It's actually worse (or, if you're not a Trump fan, better) than that. Their scaling problem is architectural, not resource-limited, something they clearly didn't understand before launch, or they wouldn't have run into this problem in the first place. (I'm amazed that they apparently didn't try load-testing it with a few million, or tens of millions, of concurrent simulated users, or they would have caught this before launch.) That's why they are desperately casting around looking for engineers who know how to build such systems. Unfortunately for them, most people who really know what they are doing don't want to work for Trump. — The Anome (talk) 12:22, 28 April 2022 (UTC)

I don't know much about their architecture, but I believe it's based on Mastodon isn't it? Twitter's big German competitor also uses it from what I heard recently. Thanks ツ Jenova20 ^(email) 08:54, 29 April 2022 (UTC)

It's not the software itself, which works just fine for up to a certain level of load, it's scaling it up beyond that. Truth Social intended to scale up relatively rapidly to tens of millions of users; to do that requires not just a large amount of hardware, but exceptional engineering skills and deep understanding of a lot of comp sci theory. For comparison, mastodon.social supports 43,000 users, and the entire fediverse not much more. Even Wikipedia, which is well funded and run by seriously competent people, only supports an average load of around two edits per second. Twitter runs at 6,000 tweets per second, more at peak times. And that's before you start thinking about views. There just aren't any servers in existence which are 3000 times faster than the top-of-the-line servers used by Wikipedia, so you end up having to build what is in effect a very very specialised special-purpose supercomputer with mutable persistent state, which is, moreover, required to run 24/7 with very high availability, while riding through hardware failures and being continuously upgraded. As the famous saying goes, quantity has a quality of its own. — The Anome (talk) 10:00, 29 April 2022 (UTC)

I see. I do remember reading about Trump/Truth Social gaining $billions in venture capital investment, but see nothing in the article about it. Found a link from December about it - here. I expect that must be getting put to use expanding server capacity in the background...Thanks ツ Jenova20 ^(email) 12:02, 29 April 2022 (UTC)

Pretty much the entire problem is that social networks are not "embarrassingly parallel"; if they were, you could just throw servers at it, job done. The difference between the two is where the real action is. — The Anome (talk) 11:09, 1 May 2022 (UTC)

They now seem to have released a web app for accessing the service, so they are presumably confident they can now handle the extra load. This is potentially a big win for them, as with one stroke both desktop and Android browser users can now use their service, vastly increasing possible reach. One key sign for this will be if they eliminate the wait list for joining. Let's see what happens now. — The Anome (talk) 18:59, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

Pov tag

I've tried to clean the article up a little, but the article suffers from a large amount of bias and the pov is clearly not neutral, verging on attacking the target in many places. I've removed some, but I am semi-retired and probably won't be able to clean it all up. Questions need to be asked about why so many left-leaning sources feel the need to attack a social network they can't access instead of just reporting on it, and why Wikipedia is reflecting these (unfounded?) attacks instead of reporting on the topic neutrally as an encyclopedia. Thanks ツ Jenova20 ^(email) 09:47, 27 April 2022 (UTC)

@Jenova20: The reason for what you perceive as bias in the article is simply that there are very few positives to report. Wikipedia's Neutral Point of View policy requires us to report what reliable sources have to say on the subject, and generally it's all been bad news for Truth Social so far. Musk's recent comments regarding download numbers is one of the few positives; I have added this to the article, per NPOV. — The Anome (talk) 07:20, 28 April 2022 (UTC)

That's not the argument i've made. The topic is a social network, yet the article tone and wording read as though the only research anyone had done was specifically looking for the most negative information, from CNN and the Guardian specifically, and then turning it up a notch. I appreciate your effort to improve the article. Thanks ツ Jenova20 ^(email) 09:27, 28 April 2022 (UTC)

You are welcome to add any positive information from WP:RS. The overall negative tone of the article reflects the overwhelmingly negative tone of commentary by reliable sources, in turn inflenced by the unfortunate history of the platform's launch. To put it mildly, Truth Social has not had a happy time of it so far. The internal meetings to discuss why it wasn't scaling as intended must have been quite amazing. — The Anome (talk) 09:47, 29 April 2022 (UTC)

I would like to point it out that many of those "reliable sources" have notable histories of being anti-Trump. -- Matt Smith (talk) 12:04, 29 April 2022 (UTC)

Agreed. The bias just in the names/titles of the sources is evident. The Guardian and CNN are hardly going to give decent unbiased coverage on the matter, judging from their histories. Thanks ツ Jenova20 ^(email) 14:31, 29 April 2022 (UTC)

@Jenova20: If you want to provide any information from actual WP:RS that are more sympathetic to the article's subject, you are welcome to do so. I've tried hard to be fair here; WP:RS have a tendency to be further left than Trump, not because they are biased, but simply because Trump is so far to the right. This chart might provide some useful context; generally, reliable sources tend to be somewhere near the top of the arch, in the range that includes "leans left" and "leans right", and the highest quality reliable sources are right at the top of the arch; the pure or near-pure fact-reporters like AP, Reuters, PBS, CBS and the BBC. — The Anome (talk) 16:52, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

I think you've misunderstood me. I'm not looking for sources "more sympathetic", i'm looking for sources that are neutral or at least less biased than the blatant bias evident from the Guardian and CNN reporting. Even their article titles are a problem. I also think it's strange to consider Trump right, when, just as Elon Musk - neither has moved politically, but the left has simply moved further and further left, leaving more voters in the new centre and right. His platform was actually quite similar to the American Left's from past decades. Thanks ツ Jenova20 ^(email) 08:40, 3 May 2022 (UTC)

I'm not seeing lot of biased content or presentation in this article as it currently stands. Especially the lede and top few sections seem pretty clean. So far all that has been mentioned is that some people don't like the sources. Can somebody identify specifically any unreliable material, or what is biased about this article's presentation, or what is left out that should be included? There is a POV tag on top, and I have no idea how to address it. Is the POV tag referring to a historical problem? -- M.boli (talk) 16:27, 3 May 2022 (UTC)

Agreed. @Jenova20:, as far as I can see, right-leaning sources support the same facts as the centre to left-leaning sources. You seem to be complaining about tone in the WP:RS, rather than their coverage of objective facts. While there is indeed a strongly critical tone to some of the cited comments from more left-wing sources, the fact is that those are the comments they made, and are article-worthy, provided they are contextualized as commentary. If you can find positive commentary from right-wing WP:RS, that would be just as article-worthy (again, when contextualized as commentary), and you are welcome to add it.

Do you have anything specific in the article that you are willing to change (after all, you can edit the article) that would improve the article, within the scope of the WP:NPOV, WP:V and WP:RS policies? Otherwise, I propose removal of the POV tag and the top of the article. — The Anome (talk) 18:44, 3 May 2022 (UTC)

I placed the POV tag after removing a few obvious examples, so it's possible I got the worst/most obvious. I have removed it as I no longer think teh article requires it, though some of the reporting really really reeks of desperation that the project will fail, hasn't failed yet, oh God, oh God why hasn't it failed yet? I have one question I can't answer easily to improve the article: First paragraph says "Former" President, yet my understanding was that previous presidents retain the title for life, so should that say "Former" president or not, since it's both technically correct and technically incorrect? Again, POV tag has been removed by me. Thanks ツ Jenova20 ^(email) 11:27, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for removing the tag. "former U.S. president" (note the lowercase 'p') is correct; he was the incumbent President of the United States (note the capitalization; this is a proper noun), and now he's not. The continued use of "President" as in "President Trump" after that fact is a different matter; it's an honorific. In the case of this article, "former president" is the relevant usage; his no longer being the president of that country is a major part of his motivation to regain his "megaphone". — The Anome (talk) 12:30, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. I have no other issue so i'll bow out of this conversation now and back into semi-retirement (Until something needs fixing). Thanks ツ Jenova20 ^(email) 12:38, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

Thanks again for your contributions; it's important that Wikipedia does not become an echo chamber for any particular political point of view, and every contribution helps. One last point: as to people on the left wishing it to fail, it's obvious from their comments that they do, and I don't think they make any secret of it. Whether it can be objectively said to have "failed" is another issue (what would be the failure condition? who gets to choose?); the one thing all WP:RS can agree on is that it hasn't been a roaring success. — The Anome (talk) 12:42, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

It's a Social Network in a crowded market. It's possible it could ultimately fail no matter what. I'd also suggest anyone editing with such a poisonous bias that they're either blatantly pushing POV, or inadvertently doing so should probably recuse themself to avoid reinforcing their bias in the article - by only looking for sources or from sources that reinforce their viewpoint for example. The entire tone of the article could be completely different if some sources were added from non-left leaning sources. I'm not volunteering for that since it doesn't interest me, and because I don't have the time. But it's a good idea. Thanks ツ Jenova20 ^(email) 15:39, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

What are "scaling issues:?

The article mentions scaling issues twice, including in the lede, but never explains what they are. Perhaps a wikilink or some deeper explanation in the article is in order.2604:3D09:C77:4E00:7C18:1AB4:6857:27B0 (talk) 00:15, 7 May 2022 (UTC)

Done. soibangla (talk) 08:54, 7 May 2022 (UTC)

Why? It's a commonly used term so people should know what it means, and Google exists for the few who don't.

Soapbox front end

This source describes the platform as using the Soapbox front end to interface with its Mastodon back end. This article was written at a time before the web app was launched, yet Soapbox seems simply to be a web front end, not an iOS app. (As of 5 May 2022, Truth Social was hosting a zipfile of their version of it: see this archived page, which would also support the source above.)

Soapbox is licensed under the AGPL 3.0; does this force them to release the source code of the iOS app? — The Anome (talk) 13:03, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

can USA non-members see posts at TS?

Article currently includes (twice) "In May 2022 the service launched a web app for accessing the service, allowing people from any internet browser to access the site, although access is still geographically restricted". A few issues:
1) the only source is a page at Yahoo!finance which seems to be just a copy-pasted press-release written by Trump Media & Technology Group.
2) the Wikipedia article doesn't elaborate on "geographically restricted". The Yahoo!finance page says "users can now sign up for and access Truth Social from any Internet-connected device in the United States". And the Yahoo page is 2-months old, no newer source?
3) the wording seems incorrect (but probably because I'm in Canada and thus not in the "United States"-only zone. While a non-member in Canada can view a handful of webpages (homepage, Help pages, TRUTH Mobile page, etc), most of the service (ie. the posts by users including Donald Trump) seem to be visible only to members. I haven't been able to find a working web-proxy, are people in the USA who are NOT members of TruthSocial now able to view posts at TruthSocial? --EarthFurst (talk) 04:33, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

They certainly can't access it via search engines: see https://truthsocial.com/robots.txt (archive) for the robots exclusion file, which stops them from even indexing their home page, let alone their user content. Given that, I suspect content is going to be visible to members only, as why would they hide it otherwise? Which seems to me to be shooting themselves in the foot, but who am I to argue with that? — The Anome (talk) 11:31, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

Researching this further led me to the EU trademark issue, which I've now added to the article: thanks, EarthFurst! — The Anome (talk) 12:04, 29 May 2022 (UTC)