After getting banned from Twitter last year, former US President Donald Trump set out to launch his own “free speech” app “Truth Social”. The app recently launched across platforms, but it is off to a bumpy start.

New users of the app are unable to register on the app and the waiting list is supposedly 500,000 users long, according to DailyMail.com. Of the new users, almost nobody has been able to use the site. Devin Nunes, CEO of Truth Social’s parent company, told Fox News that he signed up after a few hours of the launch and is currently #192,640 on the waiting list, reported the Verge.

The app surged to the top spot of Apple app chart, but it is yet to be fully functional. According to Nunes, the site may be fully operational by the end of March.

The so-called ‘free speech app’ has already started censoring content and banning users on various grounds. According to a Mashable report, developer Matt Ortega’s account was rejected based on his username @DevineNunesCow. Earlier, a parody Twitter account with the same username was sued by Republican Rep. Devin Nunes, who is now the CEO of Truth Social’s parent company. The parody account pretended Devin Nunes to be a cow of the Congressmen.

Truth Social’s moderation policy also seems to be stricter than Twitter. A few users have claimed that posting anything that moderators consider to be false, defamatory or misleading can be censored or banned on the platform.

Truth Social users can get banned for posting content that seems “libellous, slanderous or otherwise objectionable” to the moderators, reported engadget.com. This is unlike its rival Twitter that only puts blanket bans on misinformation related to COVID-19 and elections and individual bans in case of targeted harassment.

In the first announcement of Truth Social, the site’s terms of services prohibited speech that "disparage, tarnish, or otherwise harm, in our opinion, us and/or the Site”, which means content that involves Trump and other owners of the platform.

"I'm ALREADY being censored on Truth Social, Free Speech isn't free” wrote Right-wing talk show host Stew Peters on chat service Telegram after his post, which falsely claimed that COVID-19 vaccines were "dangerous" and called for the execution of those allowing the shots to be given to children, was labelled as "sensitive content" by Truth Social, reported the Mashable.

The app is currently rated 4.1 stars, but a majority of users who have rated it 5 stars haven’t been able to use it so far.

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(Edited by : Thomas Abraham)