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Donald Trump’s social media deal could complicate Twitter’s comeback Business

Donald Trump is legally obligated to post on his libertarian social network before sharing his thoughts elsewhere, documents have revealed amid speculation the former president will return to Twitter.

Mr. Trump has signed an exclusivity clause with Truth Social, which means his posts cannot appear on any other site for at least six hours after they are posted.

The former president started the company as a “free speech social network” after he was kicked off Twitter following the Capitol Hill riots two years ago.

Truth Social’s restrictions do not apply to Mr. Trump’s political campaign, the filing says, potentially paving the way for the Republican to use Twitter as a launch pad for the 2024 presidency.

Elon Musk, who won a $44bn (£36bn) offer to buy Twitter, said he would allow Trump to return if the deal goes through.

Truth Social is a close copy of Twitter with the word “tweet” replaced with “truth”. Users therefore post ‘truths’ and share the posts of other users by pressing the ‘truth’ button.

The former president owns a 46% stake in Trump Media and Technology Group, the company behind Truth Social.

Mr. Trump’s site has about 500,000 active users. Twitter said it had around 229 million active users in the first three months of 2022.

Following the riots at the US Capitol in January 2021, Mr Trump was permanently banned from Twitter “due to the risk of further incitement to violence”.

Mr Trump supporters had gathered in Washington DC to challenge the legitimacy of the 2020 US presidential election, with the former president appearing not to accept his defeat to Democratic candidate Joe Biden.

Five people were killed after a mob stormed the government building, following a tweet from Mr Trump saying: “The 75,000,000 great American patriots who voted for me, AMERICA FIRST, and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, will have a GIANT VOICE in the future. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way!!!””

Twitter’s share price fell 4.9% today, Bloomberg reported, falling below the closing price of $39.31 on April 1 when Mr Musk made his offer to buy the site. social media.

Tesla’s chief executive tweeted last week that the deal was on hold amid speculation he was hoping to make a table bid for the social media site.

Mr Musk said he suspended the deal over concerns about the number of fake accounts on Twitter, which the company pegs at 5% of its 229 million active user base.

Twitter chief executive Parag Agrawal posted a thread on the site this afternoon saying “we are suspending over half a million spam accounts every day”.

Mr Agrawal, who is widely expected to be replaced if Mr Musk completes his purchase of the social network, added that the number of spam accounts on Twitter could not be externally validated “given the critical need to use both public and private information (which we cannot share).”

Mr Musk replied with a single “poo” emoji.

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Source: www.telegraph.co.uk
This notice was published: 2022-05-16 18:02:10

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