Trump Media sued over $100k paywall in front of President's Truth Social posts
President Donald Trump’s media company is facing a lawsuit after the US leader introduced a paywall on his site.
The president’s social media platform, Truth Social, was met with criticism after it announced a new subscription plan where users would be charged up to $100,000 a month for early access to Trump’s posts.
A discounted rate of $60,000 a month would be offered to people who make a three year commitment to the subscription, known as Truth API.
The service first started last month, and the BBC reported that within the first two weeks, a whopping 10 firms were known to be paying for it, with early customers mostly being high-frequency trading firms.
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Critics have described the move as corrupt and now, Trump Media is facing a lawsuit in San Francisco, which argues that the company could profit from offering early access as well as those gaining access to information before the rest of the world.
In the suit, it describes the subscription service as a ‘corrupt business scheme’.
In a statement, San Francisco Attorney David Chiu said: “Trump Media created a marketplace that enables insider trading, which Trump directly profits from.
“This scheme turns the public trust into private profit. It is corruption, plain and simple.”
More states file lawsuits against Trump’s subscription service
The lawsuit in San Francisco isn’t actually the first, as last month, a similar suit was filed with the US district court for the southern district of New York.
The organization behind the lawsuit is the Intercept and the Freedom of the Press Foundation who argue that Trump has a stake in Trump Media worth around $1 billion and could profit from selling early access to information released in his governmental role.
The lawsuit goes on to highlight that subscribers receive access to an archive of Truth Social posts dating back four years, with some having since been deleted.
David Bralow, chief legal officer at The Intercept, stated: “Nothing could be more antithetical to the free, independent press than the president charging for early access to his public announcements.”
Former SEC official Renée Jones previously claimed that offering paid access to Truth Social could fall under insider trading laws, with Jones going on to state that federal securities laws prohibit non-public information and give traders an unfair advantage.
Under law, these actions are considered to be a break of ‘a duty or trust of confidence’, with Jones going on to say: “So if the president’s Truth Social posts are being monetized, and if some people get special access to them, that's misappropriated information. And by giving people his posts early, he is also violating his duty of trust and confidence.”
However, according to Trump Media & Technology Group spokesperson Shannon Devine, an early preview of posts doesn’t count as insider trading, as she added: “Truth API offers customers the fastest way to ingest publicly available Truth Social data. Critics must have invented a new theory of ‘insider trading’ based on publicly available information.”