“Should President Donald Trump and Twitter ultimately part ways, his campaign has a backup plan at the ready to get his voice out,” Jarrett Renshaw and James Oliphant report for Reuters. “Trump’s campaign has been building an alternative channel for him for months, a smartphone app that aims to become a one-stop news, information and entertainment platform for his supporters, in part because of concerns that the president would lose access to the Twitter platform, said his campaign manager, Brad Parscale.”
Jarrett Renshaw and James Oliphant report for Reuters:
The Trump app, which was launched in April, has since often placed among the Top 10 in Apple’s rankings of news apps, sometimes above those of individual news organizations such as CNN, The New York Times and Reuters.
“We have always been worried about Twitter and Facebook taking us offline and this serves as a backup,” [Trump campaign manager, Brad] Parscale told Reuters.
For supporters, the new app is where they can get the latest campaign news, watch campaign-produced, prime-time shows hosted by Trump allies and earn reward points for making phone calls or signing people up for the app.
For the campaign, it is a pandemic-proof substitute to Trump’s signature rallies, and a key tool to collect crucial data that can help micro-target voters ahead of November’s election.
Reward points that users can earn by getting other people to sign up for the app can be used to buy campaign gear or even score a meeting with Trump himself, the campaign said.
Biden’s campaign has a phone app as well, where supporters can donate or volunteer, and text people directly with campaign messaging.
But unlike Trump’s app, it provides little information, such as social media streams or news releases. Nor does it connect to the virtual campaign events Biden has been holding nearly daily during the coronavirus pandemic. The app is not ranked by Apple as among its 200 most popular for news…
According to Stefan Smith, a Democratic digital strategist who worked for Pete Buttigieg’s 2020 presidential campaign, the Trump app has created a “walled garden” or “digital mousetrap” where voters ideally stay as long as possible, interacting with the app’s steady stream of content.
The Trump campaign hired Texas-based company Phunware to build the app.
Bill Bigby, a Trump supporter in Scranton, Pennsylvania, said the app has now become his go-to source for the latest news. “We have learned that you can’t trust anything the media says about Trump,” Bigby, 56, said. “They just don’t like him.”
MacDailyNews Take: Get both and have twice the fun! 😉
Via Apple’s App Store, the “Team Joe Campaign App” is available here and the “Official Trump 2020 App” is available here.
Hopefully Apple doesn’t ban it or block it, would not surprise me
My thoughts exactly…
I do hope that Apple bans either or both if either or both violate the Apple Terms of Service for apps. Other platforms are allowing high profile people to violate terms of service. I believe the TOS should be applied to all no matter who you are.
“I do hope that Apple bans either or both if either or both violate the Apple Terms of Service for apps.”
Apple censorship, got it…
You sound surprised!
If the terms of service are not enforced against everyone, they will become unenforceable against everyone. Apple would lose the ability to bar pornography and solicitations for violence from its platform.
You think Trump is above complying with the rules that apply to everyone else. Got it.
Re: Being above complying with the rules that apply to everyone else:
I will not install ether.
If it follows the Trump playbook of incendiary proclamations and outright lies, they should block it. Perhaps they built in an AI based lie generator to make it easy for him.
Why are leftwards so f’ing stupid? Asking for a friend
My guess is that they won’t be re-tweeting or otherwise repeating today’s statement by Gen. Mattis.
And why should they, to please a tedious liberal detractor like you?…🖕🏼
I thought they might do it to please General Mattis and all the other military veterans who loyalty served our country and fervently helped in the President’s campaign.
Well said, agreed…
It doesn’t matter. This is over. The landslide will shock the insular Twitter/CNN/MSNBC lib echo chamber to its core.
Great! He can preach to his choir without bothering the rest of us. Obviously, only loyal followers of the president, the true believers, would install such an app.
The only good censorship is self censorship. This works for me, no App.
Trump is developing his own app to get around Twitter, FB, and Snap chat’s restrictions. Delighted subscribers would be in his digital barbed wire walled garden getting pumped with a steady, one-way unmoderated stream of Fascist demands, proclamations and commands. Domination a la an absolutist. Rightwingers who look forward to be dominated by a strong leader would love it. It could even bypass Constitution restraints, allowing him, post-presidency, to preside continuously from Trump Tower.
The US would have two presidents — the brick and mortar, Constitutional pres. and the digital, unconstitutional fake and unrestrained president — for the first time in history.
Has his own app? That will make it easier for the coward to tweet his divisive hate messages as he quivers like a little girl in his bunker and bypasses getting his messages labeled has hate speech.
C-O-W-A-R-D
Why did the chicken cross the road?
For a photo op!!