In November 2021, the company RightForge landed a huge client for their web services startup. TRUTH Social, the social media app launched by former President Donald Trump, is using the company’s services. Since the official launch of the app on Apple’s app store, North State Journal checked in with co-founder Christopher Bedford.
In an interview, Bedford says the launch has been exciting – and a learning experience.
“The launch has been exciting. It’s a slow launch, obviously it’s one where they’re ramping up. The technology ramping up, their abilities. We’ve been really proud to support the president and his company in those efforts,” Bedford said to NSJ.
One thing that Bedford immediately talked about was the level of engagement with the new app. He says Twitter has consistently shadow banned his account and he personally experiences more engagement on the new app.
The data Bedford sees “proves the president’s thesis” and he says there’s a lot of room to be competitive in the social media space “beyond the bots and trolls” and says Twitter’s policies have made it a “garbage app.”
He also uses an example of the web at large and how big tech controls a vast ecosystem.
“The internet right now, you go to an average news site, you see the ability to email or to tweet, or to share that article to Facebook. It’s a hot button. That’s built in. So competitors trying to break that muscle memory, they’ve got everything going toward them as far as the market suicide of some of the big tech decisions, but the ecosystem is not perfectly attuned to them yet. And that’s going to take time,” he says, “I’m going to be really thrilled when TRUTH Social is at full capacity, fully humming along, and I’m getting texts about ‘truths’ that are shared instead of tweets.”
Bedford added that articles from news sites not favored by big tech companies such as The Federalist and Daily Caller are being buried by Google and throttled by Twitter and Facebook.
“TRUTH Social is going to be a real place for The Federalist and you and your paper, Daily Signal, Daily Wire, and (Washington) Free Beacon to get up there and actually see what real impact they can have. So it’s been awesome to see all the different media organizations that have hopped right onto this,” says.
It’s the big tech ecosystem that Bedford says extends beyond even the social media companies that work against conservatives.
“There’s a huge amount of space for entrepreneurs who are committed to the basic bill of rights to be able to grow. We’ve seen Google search engines, the servers, email services like MailChimp, payment services like Stripe, all of these different places that’s come out and say, we don’t want somewhere between 30 and 50% of the American business because we (Silicon Valley) think you’re bad people.” said Bedford.
Locally, RightForge houses an office in Raleigh. Currently, the company has a core data center and engineers in the state. Bedford added that those numbers scale up at different times depending on the needs of projects. “You take on a big project, like TRUTH Social, you might need to bring on contractors as well to work with our core staff,” and said one of the company’s co-founders is part of the group on Raleigh.
Bedford anticipates adding more employees to go along with their core staff and one of their goals by the end of the year is being able to bring on major brand name clients who are “owned by people who are sick of giving their money towards big tech.”
He adds that the company has received interest from small business sites, local banks, and others who are “waiting patiently” to be able to join the site. “It’s shockingly difficult these days to just stand for freedom, but it’s worth it,” he says.
