Truth Social facts for kids
Logo used since February 2022
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Type of site
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Social networking service |
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| Available in | English and Portuguese |
| Founded | October 20, 2021 in Sarasota, Florida |
| Area served | Worldwide |
| Owner | Trump Media & Technology Group |
| Founder(s) |
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| CEO | Devin Nunes |
| Registration | Required |
| Users | estimated 607,000 monthly users (as of July 2023) |
| Launched | February 21, 2022 |
| Current status | Active |
| Native client(s) on | |
| Written in |
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Truth Social (stylized as TRUTH Social) is an alt-tech social media platform owned by Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), an American media and technology company majority-owned by former U.S. president Donald Trump. It has been called a "Twitter clone" that competes with Parler, Gab, and Mastodon in trying to provide an alternative to Twitter and Facebook. Truth Social uses Mastodon as its backend.
The service was launched on February 21, 2022. Since mid-2022, Truth Social has been facing financial and regulatory issues.
As of March 6, 2023[update], it was ranked number 101 in Apple's App Store rankings for social media apps, and SimilarWeb ranked its website as number 203 in their "News & Media Publishers" category, behind Gab at number 154, but ahead of Parler at number 1,052. Trump estimated in an April 2023 personal financial disclosure that the site's value ranged from $5 million to $25 million.
Digital World Acquisition Corporation (DWAC), the special-purpose acquisition company formed to fund Truth Social's parent company TMTG and take it public, disclosed in October 2023 that it was refunding to investors the $1 billion it had raised for TMTG. A November 2023 financial disclosure by DWAC indicated that Truth Social had made a cumulative loss of at least $31.5 million since its inception. In March 2024, DWAC shareholders voted to merge with TMTG, with the merged company trading on NASDAQ under the stock ticker DJT.
In May 2024, TMTG's regulatory filing for the first quarter of 2024 reported $327.6 million in losses, largely resulting from taking the company public, and $770,000 in revenue.
Contents
Platform
Personnel
Truth Social is run by Trump Media & Technology Group, and headed by former California GOP Congressman Devin Nunes. In 2022, Talking Points Memo stated Nunes' remuneration was $750,000 per year. Other senior employees included chief of technology Josh Adams and chief of product development Billy Boozer, who both subsequently left the company.
The company's headquarters are in Sarasota, Florida. It was reported to have about 40 employees in March 2022.
Software
Truth Social is modeled heavily after Twitter; users are able to make posts ("Truths", similar to tweets) and share other users' posts ("ReTruths", similar to retweets). The Truth Social platform uses a custom version of the free and open-source social network hosting software Mastodon as its backend, which omits several features, including polls and post visibility options.
The platform uses the Soapbox frontend instead of Mastodon's native frontend. TMTG has advertised for developers with skills in using Elixir, the programming language used to build Pleroma, a social networking software akin to Mastodon.
On October 21, 2021, the Software Freedom Conservancy group stated they suspected Truth Social had violated Mastodon's AGPLv3 license by not offering its source code to all users. The Mastodon developers then formally requested that Truth Social comply with the terms of the software license, with Truth Social publishing its source code as a ZIP file on the website on November 12, 2021. On February 22, 2022, the source code download was moved to the website's legal section. A mirror of the source code is available at GitHub, where it was uploaded by uninvolved individuals.
The service is designed for access by web browsing and as an app for both Android and Apple devices:
- In May 2022, the service launched a web app for accessing the service with an Internet browser, with geographical restrictions.
- On August 30, 2022, Google stated Truth Social's content moderation did not meet its standards to be available on Google Play, the default distributor of Android apps, due to violation of Google's policies prohibiting content with physical threats and incitement to violence. On October 12, 2022, Truth Social was approved for Google Play after the platform implemented stronger content moderation policies.
Infrastructure
The Truth Social service was originally hosted on RightForge, a company aimed at providing internet hosting for conservative causes that describes itself as "The first global Internet infrastructure company committed to American principles online".
In December 2021 TMTG said it had partnered with the Canadian online video platform Rumble, which was already providing cloud services to the Truth Social beta service. In April 2022, TMTG announced Truth Social would be moving to Rumble's cloud platform and announced they would be performing infrastructure upgrades to increase the platform's performance.
TMTG engaged the services of Hive, a content moderation company that uses machine learning to filter postings for unacceptable content.
As of June 2022[update], Truth Social uses Cloudflare as its CDN for both mobile and web traffic. Reuters reported Fastly had refused to take Truth Social on as a customer.
In July 2024, TMTG said it was purchasing streaming technology for Truth Social. Louisiana energy magnate James E. Davison is involved in the purchase under the business name JedTec LLC. In 2019, through his connections at the Trump White House, he received a $17 million federal grant to build roads.
Operations
Launch
Trump made the platform's first post on February 16, 2022. That day, TMTG CEO Devin Nunes said he expected the platform would not completely open to the public until late March. A beta test with 500 users was in operation during February 2022.
On February 21, 2022, Truth Social was released on Apple iOS, reaching number one on the App Store's top charts. Due to an extensive backlog of applicants, upon downloading the app, about 500,000 people who initially attempted to register as users were automatically waitlisted.
The app was installed 872,000 times during its first week, but a month later, new user signup had fallen to 60,000 per week. During that time, weekly visits to truthsocial.com fell from 6 million to fewer than 2 million.
Upon its launch, the British automotive solar power company Trailar complained Truth Social's app logo closely resembled its "T" logo.
The platform has been criticized for its poor performance at launch, with waitlisting users attempting to register and extended outages. A day after its launch, The Washington Post described it as "a disaster". A week after, Newsweek reported some early adopters were beginning to lose interest in the app due to low numbers of users and poor engagement, although others were willing to persevere with the app to see if things would improve.
Audience growth
The Truth Social platform suffered from severe and persistent problems with scalability at launch, limiting the platform's growth.
In early March 2022, multiple sources reported that Truth Social usage remained low, with Trump himself not having posted to his account since his first message two weeks earlier and his account having only 140,000 followers—less than 0.2% of the 90 million followers he had on Twitter before his account was banned. The Daily Dot reported the Truth Social iOS app had fallen from the number one slot for downloads on the Apple App Store to number 84. The Daily Beast reported Trump was dissatisfied with the social network's progress.
At the end of March 2022, TheWrap reported that weekly installations of the Truth Social app had fallen from 872,000 in its launch week to around 60,000 per week, a reduction of over 90%. Visits to truthsocial.com had also fallen, from 6 million per week to 1.9 million. According to Sensor Tower, Truth Social had been downloaded 1.2 million times by late March. In early April 2022, Bloomberg News reported that shares in Truth Social's publicly traded holding company Digital World Acquisition Corp. (DWAC) had fallen 31% from the time of the app's launch in late February and 64% from its all-time high.
In early April 2022, Business Insider described Truth Social as "like a conservative ghost town that had been overrun by bots". A U.S.-based reporter for the BBC attempted to sign up in early April and was placed on a waitlist with about 1.4 million requests ahead of him.
On April 4, it was reported that Josh Adams and Billy Boozer, the platform's chief of technology and chief of product development respectively, had left the company. A report in The Washington Post stated Truth Social was "falling apart", with problems mounting on multiple fronts. A Guardian article compared Truth Social with Trump Steaks and Trump Vodka.
As of late April 2022, MarketWatch reported Truth Social had around 513,000 active daily users, compared to Twitter's reported active daily userbase of 217 million. Usership figures were not available, but Trump was reported on August 19, 2022, to have 3.9 million Truth Social followers. He had had 89 million on Twitter and 34 million on Facebook before being banned from both platforms.
As of early June 2022, SimilarWeb reported Truth Social's iOS app as ranking #49 in the social networking category of apps on the Apple App Store. As of October 2022, the iOS app had sunk to #75 in the social networking category. During May 2023, SimilarWeb's ranking of the Truth Social iOS app fluctuated wildly, ranging from #18 to #153 in the Apple App Store social networking category during that period.
Usage
Trump Media has not reported the number of Truth Social users. Data aggregator SimilarWeb estimated their number of visitors per month at 5 million in February 2024 and the number of active users in the U.S. at 1 million per month. On March 25, 2024, the day TMTG's stock began trading publicly, Truth Social had 277,000 U.S. visitors, while Reddit had 32 million.
By April 2024, Truth Social's daily average of active users in the U.S. had dropped 19% over the past year to around 113,000. During the same period, the daily average of active U.S. users on Twitter/X was down 11% to 34 million, on Reddit up 17% to 31.4 million, and on Threads up 5% to 3.5 million. The number of monthly visits from May 2023 to April 2024 was just over 4 million, down 39% compared to the period May 2022 to April 2023. Trump Media says it does not track traditional performance indicators such as daily or monthly visitor numbers, revenue per user, or ad impressions, saying in their FEC filing that they "might not align with the best interests" of the company or its stockholders.
Acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk
Following Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter, many commentators observed that a Musk-run Twitter would be likely to reduce demand for Truth Social's services. Musk said that as of late April 2022, Truth Social iOS app downloads exceeded those of Twitter and TikTok on the same platform. He said Truth Social only existed because of Twitter's restrictions on free speech. Describing Truth Social as a "terrible name", Musk joked that it should be renamed "Trumpet".
Following Musk's comments on Twitter, the Truth Social app rose in popularity, returning to the number 1 position for free iOS apps on Apple's App Store on April 30, with the Twitter app at number 2; DWAC shares also rose in value.
DWAC's share price fell after Musk's announcement of his intention to buy Twitter. Truth Social CEO Devin Nunes later stated that Musk had been encouraged by Trump to buy Twitter; Musk denied this, saying "This is false. I've had no communication, directly or indirectly, with Trump, who has publicly stated that he will be exclusively on Truth Social." Musk subsequently said he intended to reverse Twitter's ban on Trump's Twitter account if his bid for the company was successful. Following Musk's comments, Nunes reiterated that Trump was committed to Truth Social, and would not rejoin Twitter even if his ban were to be lifted.
Following Musk's announcement in July that he no longer intended to purchase Twitter, DWAC shares rose. Musk later went through with the deal, purchased Twitter in October 2022 and after a public poll resulted in a majority of people wanting the ban to be lifted, the ban on Donald Trump was lifted in November. Donald Trump would not post to Twitter again for nearly a year, stating he preferred to use Truth Social as his primary platform.
Following the merger of DWAC into TMTG, the merged company was listed on the NASDAQ stock market under the ticker symbol DJT, after Trump's initials. The share price of the company rose rapidly after the merger, reaching a price that gave the company a nominal value of $4.48bn. It fell over the subsequent days, losing 20% on one day alone after the announcement of the company's profit and loss results over the previous year.
Trump remains unable to sell his Truth Social shares or use them as collateral until the end of a six month lock-out period. The stock has been described as a "meme stock", with early price rises driven by speculators and small investors loyal to Trump.
See also
- List of social networking services
- Social media use by Donald Trump
