Truth Social
Truth Social is an American alt-tech social media platform owned by Trump Media & Technology Group, an American company majority-owned by US 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.
The service was launched in February 2022, created in response to Trump's bans from major social networks after the January 6 Capitol attack. It is a self-styled "free-speech" alternative to mainstream platforms, catering primarily to a conservative and pro-Trump user base. Since mid-2022, it has faced financial and regulatory issues. It was unavailable on Google Play because of policies prohibiting content with physical threats and incitement to violence, but approved in October 2022 after agreeing to enforce policies against incitement.
, it was ranked number 38 in Apple's App Store rankings for social media apps. In 2022, Similarweb ranked it 133 in the U.S. in their "News & Media Publishers" category, ahead of Gab at 720 and Parler at 5,117.
Digital World Acquisition Corp., the special-purpose acquisition company formed to fund Truth Social's parent company TMTG and take it public, disclosed in 2023 that it was refunding investors the $1 billion it had raised for TMTG. A 2023 financial disclosure by DWAC indicated Truth Social had made a cumulative loss of at least $31 million since its inception. In 2024, DWAC shareholders voted to merge with TMTG, with the merged company trading on Nasdaq. In May 2024, TMTG's regulatory filing for the first quarter of 2024 reported $328 million in losses, resulting from taking the company public, and $770,000 in revenue.
Estimates in early 2025 suggested 6.3 million monthly active users—small compared with major rivals. Truth Social has faced multiple regulatory and legal investigations, including scrutiny from the SEC and DOJ over financial disclosures and accounting practices. The platform has drawn criticism for content moderation inconsistencies, misinformation, and its role in Trump’s political and media ecosystem.
History
Background
U.S. President Donald Trump raised the prospect of building a new social media platform after he was banned from Facebook and Twitter in 2021, following the 2021 United States Capitol attack In May 2021, Trump launched "From the Desk of Donald J. Trump", a web page where he posted short tweet-like announcements; it was shut down after less than a month, with Trump's senior aide Jason Miller confirming it would not be coming back.Inception
According to Reuters, two members of the cast of Trump's TV show The Apprentice, Wes Moss and Andy Litinsky, were "central" to the founding of Truth Social's parent company, the Trump Media & Technology Group, having allegedly pitched the idea of a social network to Trump in January 2021.Blank-check company and Chinese finance
To facilitate becoming a publicly traded company, a special-purpose acquisition company called Digital World Acquisition Corp was created with the help of ARC Capital, a Shanghai-based firm specializing in listing Chinese companies on American stock markets that has been a target of SEC investigations for misrepresenting shell corporations. ARC also provided at least $2 million to get DWAC off the ground through a Singapore-based fund. Led by China-based banker Abraham Cinta, ARC Capital's global links included offices in Shanghai, Wuhan, Mexico City, and Jakarta, which Bloomberg News described as "surprising", due to Trump's comments on various foreign countries in office. Some investors were surprised to learn their investment money was being used to finance a Trump company. The DWAC chief executive Patrick Orlando, a Florida-based financier and former Deutsche Bank trader, was also the chief executive of the Wuhan-based Yunhong Holdings/Yunhong International, registered in the offshore tax haven of the Cayman Islands. In an October 2021 SEC filing, the special-purpose acquisition company Yunhong International stated its goal was to "capitalize on growing opportunities created by consumer/lifestyle businesses that have their primary operations in Asia." Reuters quoted a deleted presentation from 2020, in which ARC Capital said it "was able to craft a Wuhan-based SPAC sponsored by a family office, structured by ARC in Singapore, to allow our client to enjoy the flexibility and benefits of the U.S. financial markets." Yunhong was liquidated in December 2021, while its backers remained involved with the DWAC and Truth Social venture. An additional backer of the Trump social media venture, becoming the CFO of Digital World Acquisition, was Brazilian parliamentarian Luiz Philippe of Orléans-Braganza, a monarchist allied with Jair Bolsonaro.Promotion and early reception
In October 2021, TMTG published a document outlining the Truth Social platform, citing a poll saying one-third of the U.S. population polled had stated they would use a social media platform endorsed by Trump. On October 20, TMTG issued a press release announcing the platform would have its public launch in "the first quarter of 2022." It was slated to enter limited beta for Apple iOS in November 2021, and though it did not meet this schedule for its beta testing, Trump claimed in December 2021 "invited guests" were already using the beta system.Hours after the press release, a person identifying themselves as a part of the hacker collective Anonymous used Shodan to discover domains related to the company, eventually locating what appeared to be a publicly-accessible mobile beta of the service. The URL, which permitted users to sign up and use the platform, was leaked across social media. Users began trolling, creating parody accounts, and posting rants and memes. Users were able to sign up with usernames of high-profile individuals including Trump, Mike Pence, and Jack Dorsey. The link was later taken offline.
Russian finance
According to The Guardian, in December 2021, two loans totaling $8million were paid to Trump Media from obscure Putin-connected entities as the company was "on the brink of collapse". $2million was paid by Paxum Bank, part-owned by Anton Postolnikov, a relation of Aleksandr Smirnov, a former Russian government official who now runs the Russian maritime company Rosmorport. $6million was paid by an ostensibly separate entity, ES Family Trust, whose director was the director of Paxum Bank at the same time. As of March 2023, prosecutors in the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York were investigating the Russian ties. The Washington Post reported that Trump Media paid a $240,000 finder's fee as part of the arrangement, allegedly to a party associated with Digital World.The federal probe into investors of DWAC, according to The Washington Post, discovered that a wealthy investor in the company was allegedly connected to attempts to allegedly move assets from Russia, Ukraine, and China into the Caribbean, and other intermediaries such as Hong Kong, United Kingdom, and Belize. According to a government transcript, an informant referenced the process as "the full Singapore with a double dip, as we call it, with having the U.K. thrown in there, just to give it that added cleanliness and polishing off."
Reactions
The New York Times described Truth Social as an addition to the field of already-existing alt-tech platforms. BBC journalist James Clayton stated the platform could be a more successful version of other alt-tech social media platforms like Parler and Gab and is an attempt by Trump to gain his "megaphone" back. Gettr CEO Jason Miller, a former Trump advisor, praised Truth Social and said the platform will cause Facebook and Twitter to "lose even more market share". Gab said in a statement it supports Truth Social and users of Gab can follow Trump on his reserved Gab account.Among critical reactions, Chris Cillizza of CNN wrote that the platform was doomed to fail. Noah Berlatsky, writing for The Independent, described it as a "potential threat to democracy". The Forward raised concerns of antisemitism becoming prominent on the platform, noting similar platforms have become known for hosting antisemitic content, such as Parler, Gab, and Telegram. Rolling Stone observed that while Truth Social promises to be an open and free platform, Truth Social's terms of service include a clause stating users cannot disparage the service. The New York Times expressed skepticism about whether Truth Social would be able to compete effectively against rival services.
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. In October 2024, ProPublica reported that a whistleblower sent a letter alerting the board that the company had outsourced programming work to Mexico, citing concerns about the quality of the work and the split from 'America first' principles.
Software
Truth Social is modeled heavily after Twitter; users are able to make posts and share other users' posts.The Truth Social platform uses a custom version of the free and open-source social network hosting software Mastodon as its back end, which omits several Mastodon features, including polls and post visibility options. The platform uses Soapbox Technology's "Soapbox" front end instead of Mastodon's native front end. TMTG has advertised for developers with skills in using Elixir, the programming language used to build Pleroma, a social networking software compatible with 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 a web 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 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.