Donald Trump’s social network Truth brings losses of $73 million

Truth Social, a social network for supporters of former US President Donald Trump, has lost $73 million since launching in early 2022, Reuters reported, citing a mandatory disclosure filed by its owner Digital World Acquisition Corp with the Securities and Exchange Commission to look into the future. merge with parent company Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) and go public to find funding for the platform.

The first attempt to merge the unprofitable social network with TMTG failed back in October 2022. Trump announced the launch of his network in October 2021. According to him, it “stands up to big technology” companies such as Twitter and Facebook (owned by Meta, which is recognized extremist organization and banned in the Russian Federation). They banned him from accessing his accounts due to accusations of spreading hatred after the storming of the Capitol in January 2020 by Republican supporters.

At the time of the launch of Trump’s social network in February 2022, there were about half a million users in the queue to register there, and the weekly number of app installations was about 872,000. Already in March, the figure dropped to 60,000 per week. By the end of March, Truth Social had been downloaded 1.2 million times.

In May 2022, Trump’s TMTG published the results of a poll, according to which up to 54% of Republican Party supporters allegedly declared a desire to join the ex-president’s social network. But at that moment there were only 513,000 active daily users.

The excitement around the network had already begun to subside, since a month earlier Elon Musk acquired Twitter and announced plans for large-scale community reform. Musk argued that Truth Social’s very existence was only possible because of censorship on other platforms, which he intends to get rid of. According to the latest data, the number of active users of Truth Social is 607,000.

Truth Social is a failed project from a financial point of view, but it did not have a commercial goal: the ex-president wanted to create a media alternative to hostile social networks, recalls political strategist and head of Dubravsky Consulting Pavel Dubravsky. At the same time, the social network has completed the task of bypassing classical social platforms and their censorship for nuclear supporters, the expert believes.

It’s easier for Trump to write one tweet on a friendly platform than to go on television and defend himself from journalists’ questions, Dubravsky believes: “The effect in terms of coverage is approximately the same, and in some cases even higher. Truth pays off rather politically.” The political strategist notes that reports of network losses are being disseminated as part of a campaign to discredit the ex-president during the election campaign.

Trump’s social network works better than its right-wing conservative alternatives, the expert believes: the Parler network closed in 2023, although it started with 15 million users in 2018. The conservative Gettr, according to SimilarWeb, collects 100,000 users per month. But political scientist Evgeniy Minchenko believes that the Truth platform has nevertheless turned into a reservation for right-wing conservative Trump supporters, and its mobilization capabilities are negligible.

“Greater coverage also implies another task – to make the platform both a business and a social network for everyone,” the expert noted. – The path of the political social network turned out to be not very effective: it is difficult to become a new user there, as well as to consume content. This scheme does not work as a quick system for disseminating propaganda to a wide audience.”