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Truth Social says it’s building a live TV service

Truth Social says it’s building a live TV service

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Donald Trump’s media firm wants to build a service for ‘content that has been canceled.’

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Graphic photo illustration of Donald Trump.
Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos from Brandon Bell, Getty Images

Truth Social, the media firm owned by Donald Trump, has announced plans to create a live TV streaming service focused on “news networks” and “religious channels,” along with “content that has been canceled, is at risk of cancellation, or is being suppressed.”

The Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG) says it will launch the streaming service in three phases, with the first involving the rollout of the company’s content delivery network (CDN). A CDN, such as those operated by Cloudflare and Akamai, is a service websites use to help webpages load faster. TMTG says its CDN will operate “independent of Big Tech,” allowing the platform to avoid abiding by another company’s rules.

Once that’s up and running, TMTG plans to bring Truth Social’s CDN for livestreaming to the platform’s mobile and web apps. The company then says it will roll out standalone over-the-top streaming apps for phones and tablets before releasing a streaming app for TVs. In a statement, Truth Social CEO Devin Nunes says the streaming service will offer a “guaranteed platform” for news and entertainment “that face discrimination by other channels and content delivery services.”

Truth Social went public last month, with Trump owning around 79 million shares of the company. The stock slumped this week amid a massive sell-off and a filing pointing to Trump as a “risk” to the company.