'Conservative ghost town': what Trump's social network Truth Social looks like from the inside

When he was cut off from Twitter, Facebook and YouTube in early 2021, the 45th President of the United States, Donald Trump, promised to launch his own social network. About 13 months later, on February 21, 2022, he launched Truth Social. What this social network looks like, what it offers to users and who has already registered there, Rosie Bradbury found out for publication Business Insider. Next - from the first person.

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I downloaded the Truth Social app on launch day and created an account - I was told that I was put on the waiting list at the number 157 120. Three weeks later, on March 14, I was finally allowed to use the app.

And I discovered a conservative ghost town, taken over by bots.

Trump Media & Technology Group, the company behind Truth Social, is pitching its app as an alternative to the major social media platforms that banned Trump for inciting violence during the storming of the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.

At the moment, there are signs that Truth Social has failed.

Since launch, the number of downloads and the time spent in the app has decreased. According to Similarweb analysis, the app has fallen from the top download position in Apple's US App Store to 173rd.

This is partly due to the app's long waiting list, preventing willing users from getting into it for several weeks. But even when I got off the waiting list and logged into the app, followed the app's most popular users, and scrolled through my feed, I still had nothing to see or do.

Lack of original content

My suggested subscriptions were sometimes weird and my feed didn't have a lot of original content.

After completing the setup process for new users, I was prompted to sign up for 50 accounts.

Of course, one was Trump's account (823 followers), the other was Fox News anchor Sean Hannity (000). Then there was the account of Kyle Rittenhouse (372), who was acquitted of all charges last November after he shot dead two people during protests in Wisconsin.

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Other subscriptions suggested included the "Cats with Jobs" meme account (38), an account called "Hot Golf Chicks" (000), and the official NASA account (61).

As soon as I signed up for these accounts, my “truth” feed — what Truth Social calls posts — started to fill up, but with very little original content. Looking through my feed, I found that most of the posts were just links to articles on websites, automatically published via RSS feeds.

Several publications, including the Fox-owned tabloid TMZ and the right-wing British newspaper The Daily Mail, were featured by Truth Social.

But there were no other major news organizations: CNN, NBC, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal (although there was no shortage of fake accounts for these publications).

Interestingly, Fox News, which was once Trump's favorite news network, did not seem to be present. There was an account called @FoxNewsChannel but it only has 5920 followers and only 30 truths posted.

There is an RSS aggregator bot for the Fox Sports website that has 76 subscribers, but the account does not appear to have been linked to the Fox feed itself.

Several prominent conservatives have been active in Truth Social

Fox News host Sean Hannity has reached 372 subscribers and posted several truths a day. Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green and Congresswoman Paul Gosar had 000 and 71 subscribers, respectively.

But these accounts are the exception rather than the rule. A host of prominent Republicans and conservative commentators, including Ben Shapiro and Infowars host and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, were nowhere to be seen.

Through the app's profile finder, I couldn't find a single verified US Senator or Democrat from either House of Congress.

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However, I did find a few Republican legislators. Representatives Byron Donalds and Lisa McClain were there with 1000 and 233 followers respectively, but neither of them published a single post.

Major news stories, such as the Russian-Ukrainian war, seemed to receive minimal attention.

I could search for themed hashtags, but even those that you thought would get a lot of attention from users, say those related to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, were hardly popular. For example, only 1320 people used the #Ukraine hashtag.

One Ukraine-related hashtag I found on the app was #Ukrainebiolabs.

There is a debunked conspiracy theory that Ukraine is involved in covert US-funded biological weapons testing. However, the conspiracy theory is spread by sites like Infowars and Russian disinformation channels. It was also mentioned in three separate Fox News segments hosted by Tucker Carlson.

However, the hashtag is associated with very few posts and has limited activity.

The private messaging feature didn't work. The user interface of Truth Social is very similar to Twitter, but has a few gaps in functionality.

You can reply, repost, and like, but you can't add your own quote-tweet-style comments. However, you can block and disable users.

There is a private messaging feature, but it wasn't activated when I used the app.

Truth Social seems to have a service for verifying users with a red checkmark, but few profiles have it. Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has a Truth Social account with one post and 5010 followers, but her page has not been verified.

Trump only posted once

Even the people you would expect to be active users of Truth Social, like Trump himself, are barely active.

A post from Trump's account, published about a month earlier, read: "Get ready! Your beloved president will see you soon!”

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Since then, the former president has not written anything.

Even if Trump posts frequently on Truth Social, he still won't generate anything like the level of engagement he had on Twitter before he was banned. As of April 1, 2022, Trump had only about 823 followers on Truth Social - up from 000 million followers on Twitter in early January 88.

The app is flooded with bots

Truth Social was meant to be a haven for conservative discussions. But it is more like Bot Social. For example, many responses to Trump's only post were ads for niche cryptocurrencies. And even popular hashtags mostly contained bot-generated posts or non-organic content.

It's possible that Truth Social could take off at some point in the future. However, this is far from what will become the social media platform of choice for Trump and his supporters right now.

And other right-wing apps, like Gettr, founded last year by former Trump aide Jason Miller, have more users and more daily activity.

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