Exclusive: Head of engineering for Trump’s Truth Social app resigns

MicroWave@lemmy.world to politics @lemmy.world – 243 points –
Exclusive: Head of engineering for Trump’s Truth Social app resigns
reuters.com

The head of engineering for the company that operates former U.S. President Donald Trump’s Truth Social app told Reuters on Monday he had resigned, in a blow for the venture.

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Alex Gleason, for anyone wondering he's said he's going to work full time on...

open-source technology for “decentralized” social media platforms that operate on independently-run servers and provide an alternative to Twitter and Facebook. ... developing technology for connecting multiple decentralized platforms

Reinventing the fediverse? Watch out for that, I guess.

Wasn't Truth Social just a mastodon instance to begin with?

Apparently the backend still is, just a customised version to exclude poll and post visibility option functionality. I assume there are other changes too, because he and his team swapped the frontend out for their own and made a Web app version. Not much to show for 16 months since launch, really. Embarrassing.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth\_Social#Software is a fun read

I wouldn't be shocked if someone told me the front end was stolen, too.

Well it wasn’t a good scam. It’s not like Donald trump paid him a single dime for ripping off mastodon.

Reinventing the wheel but worse is what the right-wing's always been good at.

If you won't accept them in your club, they'll make their own with Whitejack and Alpha-malesᵗᵐ

Gleason used to contribute to pleroma before the split.

They prob just wanted a tailor made soapbox.fe and once it was done didn't have any more work.

Good to know, I thought there might be something weird about software with a name heavily embedded in Christian theology, so I should have seen that coming.

Truth Social has an estimated 607,000 monthly users, according to data from Similarweb.

Trump had 5.71 million followers on Truth Social

lmao look at all those bots

I didn't realize that that thing still existed. By now, isn't it just Trump spending a whole hell of a lot of money to talk to himself?

I'd be curious to know how many of his "followers" are actually just bots and accounts made up by his staff so Trump thinks people actually follow him.

Seriously, does anybody of note (or at all, for that matter) actually use that app? I've never seen a non-Trump post. (I refuse to call it a "truth" because truth is something that has never once come out of his mouth.)

Another comment highlighted the disparity between his “5.x million” followers and 600k or so actual monthly users. And how many of those are bots too you know?

I'd also be willing to bet that at least some of his "live" followers are merely journalists who only have an account so they can follow him as part of their job, along with probably all of his employees who are likely required to follow his account as a condition of employment.

Elon will welcome him back with tears in his eyes

Didnt he basically already do that, but the trumpsterfire declined?

Most people don't like right wing anything. Not really a surprise.

"Right-wing (blank)" is almost always a failure. Like the "right wing dating sites" that are mostly sausage fests looking for brood mares, from what I've heard. LOL

I read an article a few months ago from someone on twitter that was able to gain access to the newest one, the right stuff I think it was. The reports of the profile pics of guys in front of confederate flags with dozens of guns displayed around and the other things she saw there were hilarious. It was exactly as you say, no real women, just a bunch of guys that most women would never give a second look.

They all seem like con runs. Quickly con a base and dip.

Here's something to ponder.

Why don't any of Trump's high-profile lackeys actually use Trump's twitter knock-off if it's supposed to be this bastion of conservative speech?

Not sure if rhetorical but the simplest answer is that it doesn't "own the libs".

Whatever Trump says is immediately (for some reason) picked up by a bunch of other places so he gets all the attention. I assume this is why he hasn't moved back to Twitter (I believe his exclusivity deal has ended).

Although I always assumed Musk/Twitter would "acquire" Truth Social for an undisclosed sum (probably $1). It gives Musk the "free speech" argument (which is fucking stupid but we live in stupid times) and it gives Trump the "excellent businessman" story (again, fucking stupid) while also giving him a clean exit.

Of course there is another reason, everyone hates Trump. He is a useful idiot so they'll say "good job" and "great idea" but no one actually believes in him. Yes he can make fools dance, which is a useful ability, but it will only get you so far. If Trump wasn't a piece of shit I'd probably feel bad for him. But he is, fuck em.