Truth Social requires something called multifactor authentication to open an account which requires that you have a smartphone. I don't think it's enough to have a "flip phone" with texting ability but I MIGHT be wrong on that. It's been so many years since I had a flip phone that I couldn't tell you for sure.
A lot of Freepers here have a big issue with that (supplying their cellphone number to Truth) and I try to politely explain to them the reason why Truth has this requirement.
Truth Social is an alternative social media platform to the big tech monopolies like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram that have all conspired to silence President Trump and mute/cancel his supporters. It is still in its infancy but already has nearly four million active users and is growing every day as well as constantly adding new features. It is a great platform to get in on the ground floor with.
That all said, Truth Social has a lot of enemies that are trying to either shut it down or make it unusable for those who access it. So Truth Social has a lot of countermeasures in place to prevent bots (automated user accounts that mimic human behavior) and users setting up multiple accounts with which they could create mischief and generally spam the platform with garbage. We saw this with the @realdonaldtrump aaccount on Twitter. Within milliseconds of Trump posting there, there would be hundreds of replies spammed to his Tweet with the nastiest kind of garbage imaginable. This made it virtually impossible for anybody to engage Trump (or any of his well known supporters) in a meaningful way.
While it is impossible to prevent Truth users from posting nasty stuff to Trump's "Truths" without employing censorship tactics, Truth does do a great job keeping down the noise by restricting the accounts an individual can have to one and ensuring that all registered users are who they say they are.
They do this with the multifactor authentication that requires a cellphone. Now if Truth allowed email verification only, they would open themselves up to bots and spammers as it is fairly easy for an individual to have a hundred or more free email accounts and thus setup an individual user account for themselves with each one.
However, it is not so easy to do that when cellphone verification is thrown it. It would be prohibitively expensive for most people to have a hundred different unique cellphone numbers! So if somebody tries to open a second Truth account using the same phone number, they are flagged as trying to open a duplicate account.
So bottom line, it's not enough to just supply username and password to use your account. You must have a six digit unique code sent to your smartphone that you then punch in to prove you are who you say you are. This makes it impossible for somebody to log into your account on a different device and pretend they are you. Even if they knew the six-digit code you were given, that code expires within a few minutes and so the person trying to take over your account is out of luck unless they have your smartphone as well.
Can you use your daughter's (or somebody else's smartphone) to get an account setup? Yes. You should then be able to log in with just your username and password from that point on so long as you are on the same computer. However, when you get a new computer, you will likely need to repeat the process again.
Sorry for the longwinded post but I hope that helps and also explains why it has to be this way with Truth Social - at least for now.
Thank you so much for all your explanation. As long as it is OK to use my daughter’s phone temporarily, I will do that when I see her tomorrow. Thanks again!!!
Thanks for the very clear and detailed posting.
I’m sure it will be helpful to many folks.
I’m nearly 80 and not a cell phone user, so the degree of hassle involved to access the site convinces me to not even try.