Washington, Oct 21 (IANS): Former US President Donald Trump has announced plans to launch a new social media network, called TRUTH Social, media reports said.

According to the BBC, Trump said the platform would "stand up to the tyranny of big tech", accusing them of silencing opposing voices in the US.

Social media played a pivotal role in Trump's bid for the White House and was his favourite means of communication as president. But he was banned from Twitter and suspended from Facebook after his supporters stormed the US Capitol.

Social media firms were under pressure throughout Trump's presidency to ban him, with his posts criticised as insulting, inflammatory or peddling outright falsehoods, the report said.

Last year Twitter and Facebook began deleting some of his posts or labelling them as misleading, such as one in which he said Covid-19 was "less lethal" than the flu.

They took the decision to ban or suspend Trump after the January riots, which followed a speech in which he made baseless claims of electoral fraud.

Responding to the riots, Trump called those at the Capitol "patriots" and showed no sign of accepting the result of the election, prompting Twitter and Facebook to rule that it was too risky to allow him to continue to use their sites.

Since then he and his advisers have hinted that they were planning to create a rival social media site.

Earlier this year, he launched From the Desk of Donald J Trump, which was often referred to as a blog.

The website was permanently shut down less than a month after it launched after attracting only a fraction of the audience he would have expected through established sites.

His senior aide Jason Miller said it was "just auxiliary to the broader efforts we have and are working on".

An early version of his latest venture, TRUTH Social, will be open to invited guests next month, and will have a "nationwide rollout" within the first three months of 2022, according to a statement by Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG).