A Shady App Is Tricking Trump Supporters Into Thinking They’ve Joined the True Truth Social

An obvious rip-off of Donald Trump’s social media community Truth Social has racked up downloads within the six figures on Google’s Play Store, inflicting confusion by MAGA sorts who failed to appreciate the excellence.

Insider first reported that the app, which is titled “MAGA Hub — Truth Social Trump” on the Play Store, has crossed 100,000 downloads as of Tuesday. While the app itself was launched in August 2021, effectively earlier than information broke that Trump was pursuing the “Truth” branding for his social community, a lot of the downloads seem to have been in the previous couple of weeks. Trump Media & Technology Group lately launched a beta model of Truth Social by way of Apple’s App Store, but it surely has but to open the platform to Android customers. The “MAGA Hub” app has stepped as much as fill that void, showing on the prime of search outcomes for an official launch on the Play Store.

MAGA Hub, for what it’s price, comprises $28.99 in-app purchases with an unclear goal and robotically subscribes customers to a world chat group which Insider stories sends out “a constant stream of memes and messages.” The web page lists because the developer a person named Lukas Neissen, who has printed a number of different apps below the “SocialHubs” model, together with nearly similar apps for LGBT folks and followers of YouTuber Jake Paul or Tesla/SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. A residential deal with in Germany can also be listed as the corporate’s location.

MAGA Hub guarantees varied options for customers, together with that it’s “End-to-end encrypted, no algorithms,” has a Stories function, and boasts an “endless amount of content customized for you.” It additionally states customers will have the ability to play the curiously titled “MAGA-Game”:

Play the sport that was specifically created for the MAGA neighborhood. Check out the worldwide leaderboard, how effectively did you play?

Gizmodo would have liked to discover this pleasant expertise even additional, however after we tried to register an account on the app, it offered an error message stating that it had already exceeded the allowed variety of every day electronic mail verifications. While our account was apparently created, the password we selected throughout the signup course of didn’t work, and the account restoration function merely returned the message “Something went wrong.” Eventually, the app randomly started displaying content material from its information feed, which nearly completely consisted of the sort of stuff you’d see in a QAnon channel on Telegram or a t-shirt at CPAC. An try and entry the “Global Chat” was blessedly blocked by MAGA Hub’s incapacity to ship a verification electronic mail.

Gizmodo reached out to the e-mail deal with listed as the purpose of contact for MAGA Hub, in addition to Trump Media & Entertainment Group, for remark. We haven’t heard again, however we’ll replace this submit after we do.

A fast search of commentary from users on Twitter and within the MAGA Hub app’s assessment part confirmed customers complaining of technical glitches, spam, poorly applied options, shock billing, and that they’d been tricked into downloading it within the first place. Reviews have been flowing in at a gradual tempo all through Tuesday. (Gizmodo couldn’t instantly decide which of those critiques have been earnest or trolls hoping to lure extra Trump supporters into downloading the app.)

“Signs you out & Competely deletes profile after reviewing app. All friends/followers lost,” one reviewer on the Play Store, who gave the app one out of 5 stars, wrote. “Identity if True Truth Social. Crashes far too much. International needs a translate button. Prefer a choice to opt-out of chat & notifications. Needs to define option buttons on feed & help option.”

“As of yet still full of bugs with lots of loading and buffering,” one other one-star reviewer added. “So far I was able to use it for 5 minutes them nothing. Hopefully it’s fixed doom as I paid for premium.”

Many customers appeared to have been below the impression that MAGA Hub was the Android model of Truth Social. While as of Tuesday afternoon the overwhelming majority of individuals appeared to have caught on, quite a lot of customers had seemingly missed the memo.

“Thought this was trumps new social site,” one other weighed in. “It is not. Ads everywhere and possible malware. Plus you can’t delete the profile . Can’t delete the posts unless one by one. Terribly misleading info of what this app is. Not worth it or a premium membership. Deleted it.”

“I would really appreciate it Trump if you could make the video lengths much longer as I want to use my profile to be of service, and that entails to post much longer then 10 second videos,” one consumer pleaded to the ex-president. Another added, “Love it, love trump, love freedom of speech, love right wing news, I love unbiased information with no fact checking.”

“Thank you President Trump for everything you did and tried to accomplish for us Americans, you will forever be in my prayers and I will always support you. This is coming from a convicted felon also.. doesn’t change the facts at stake here,” one five-star reviewer posted.

Some customers theorized MAGA Hub is a Democratic psyop of some type. Others charged that, really, Democrats have been the reason for its technical issues or low critiques (which have been really surprisingly beneficiant, averaging at simply over 3 stars with over 8,000 critiques).

“Not good more likely a scam by the Democrats. All this app does is freeze my phone. I’m deleting right away. Can be a virus,” one wrote. Another added, “It’s a great change to fraudbook. My first review disappeared like many others on here has. Good ol’dem promoting Google/demorats are messing with this site. Don’t back down from these pukes!”

Then there was this man, who liked the app apart from the abundance of snuff pictures within the world chat.

“This isn’t trumps app I think but it is called the same .Seems like a cool crowd except for the weirdo showing canibal serial killer corpse murder pictures in a huge list,” that consumer wrote.

Truth Social’s iOS launch has itself been removed from spotless. While it took the primary place on the App Store, it additionally launched with quite a few bugs starting from irritations like everlasting waitlists for brand spanking new customers to partial server outages and the unintended use of one other firm’s emblem. Truth Social, like MAGA Hub, doesn’t seem to have a browser model prepared but, though one is apparently in the works.