Trump's Truth Social app back on Google Play Store

San Francisco, Oct 13

Truth Social, the social media app created by former US President Donald Trump, resurfaced on Google Play Store after the tech giant banned it in August over failing to meet its policies.

Shares of Trump's company Digital World Acquisition Corp went up in the after-hours trading after Google's decision.

Google said in a statement that it permits apps on the Google Play Store as long as they "comply with our developer guidelines, including the requirement to effectively moderate user-generated content and remove objectionable posts such as those that incite violence", reports CNBC.

Truth Social has agreed to enforce the content moderation measures on users.

Google last month allowed conservative social media app Parler to be back on its Play Store, after it removed the app in January 2021 for violating its policies following the US Capitol riots.

Trump's media company is facing a probe from the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) following a complaint alleging securities violations.

Twitter had also banned Trump in January 2021 "due to the risk of further incitement of violence" following the January 6 siege on the Capitol.

Trump founded Truth Social after he was banned from Twitter.

Truth Social is now available to the 44 per cent of smartphone users in the US who are on Android.

Tesla and SpaceX billionaire Elon Musk last week called Trump's "Truth Social" app as a "Trumpet" of "right-wing echo chamber".

The billionaire slammed Trump's social media app, Truth Social, in a recent interview with Financial Times.

Musk said he bought Twitter in order to avoid the site becoming a counterpart to Truth Social.

Truth Social suffered a rocky rollout. The social media app also has considerably less reach than Twitter with nearly 513,000 daily active users compared to Twitter's 229 million.