A mysterious social media app appears to be luring people out of $4.99 a week to access the app while claiming that Donald Trump is on the platform.
The ex-president has now hit the company with a cease-and-desist letter, The Post has learned. The letter demands that the app stop using President Trump’s likeness.
The app, called 2nd1st, is available on Apple’s app store and bills itself as a place for “uncensored news and chat.”
In addition to Trump, the app features profiles for conservative figures like Republican Sens. Marsha Blackburn and Rand Paul, as well as former “The View” host Meghan McCain.
It’s not clear that any of these people actually uses the platform. After The Post contacted a source close to Trump for this story, attorneys for the ex-president’s team sent the cease-and-desist letter.
2nd1st’s listing on the Apple App Store prominently features a screenshot of a fake post from Trump. It’s actually a copied-and-pasted version of a Jan. 8 tweet in which Trump said — on Twitter, not on 2nd1st — that the people who voted for him “will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future.”
The tweet was cited by Twitter in its blog post about why it banned Trump for allegedly inciting violence.
The app also has a profile page for Trump featuring dozens of other posts — even though the ex-president’s spokeswoman Liz Harrington confirmed to The Post that he doesn’t use the platform.
Since Trump was booted from mainstream social media in January, a slate of free speech-oriented platforms have sprouted up in attempts to court the president and his millions of followers.
Gettr, a Twitter alternative run by former Trump adviser Jason Miller, is pushing to get the ex-president to join the platform, including by reportedly offering him equity. Another free speech app, Parler, has also courted Trump.
But while Trump has refused so far to join any other new social media platforms, 2nd1st shows that companies are looking to step into the void of his absence from Facebook and Twitter.
When users download 2nd1st, they’re shown videos of Trump rallies and urged to sign up for expensive subscriptions that automatically renew every week.
“We must not yield to advertisers or cancel culture,” reads the 2nd1st app’s greeting screen. “Start 3 Day Free Trial then $4.99/wk.”
Other users are have been charged $9.99 per week or more, according listings on the App Store.
Apple does not disclose how much money apps take in through its store, but 2nd1st currently has 2,800 reviews on the App Store. As a conservative estimate, if all 2,800 reviewers were forking over $4.99 per week, 2nd1st would be taking in around $728,000 per year.
2nd1st has a 4.4…
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