Former US President Donald Trump’s social media app is facing a hard time securing a place in the Play Store. Although the app is readily available on the Apple App Store, Google is taking its own sweet time to approve the Truth social app on Play Store due to insufficient content moderation, as per Axios. To recall, Trump was banished from all social media accounts, including Facebook, Twitter and even Google’s YouTube, after he was accused of inciting the rioters involved in attacking the Capitol Hill building in 2021.
Not getting approved on Play Store after almost a year of its launch is a major setback for Trump’s social media app. The US smartphone market includes about 40 per cent of Android users. It is practically impossible for users to access Trump’s social media app if it is not available on platforms like the Apple App Store and Play Store.
“On August 19, we notified Truth Social of several violations of standard policies in their current app submission and reiterated that having effective systems for moderating user-generated content is a condition of our terms of service for any app to go live on Google Play,” Google said in a statement. The search giant has noted that the social media app violates some of its guidelines.
In response to Google’s allegations, Trump’s social media company has said that it has “continuously worked in good faith with Google to ensure that the Truth Social Android App complies with Google’s policies without compromising our promise to be a haven for free speech. “Moreover, some of our competitors’ apps are allowed in the Google Play Store despite rampantly violating Google’s prohibition on sexual content and other policies, whereas Truth Social has zero tolerance for sexually explicit content,” the company said in a press release.
Back in April, Trump’s Truth social app was the most downloaded free iPhone app in the App Store. Interestingly, when Tesla CEO Elon Musk was in the process of taking over Twitter, he invited Trump to rejoin Twitter. Musk was against Trump’s ban and criticized Twitter executives for banning him. However, Trump had politely declined his offer.
