Truth Social

• 1. Introduction

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  Truth Social began with one line from Donald Trump on the 16th of February 2022. The post read: "Get ready! Your favorite president will see you soon."

  The platform is an American social network where people publish short posts. It is run by Trump Media & Technology Group, a company that Trump majority owns. Critics have called it a "Twitter clone." Its owners pitch it as a free-speech alternative to the mainstream networks, which places it in a corner of the internet known as alt-tech.

  Why did Donald Trump want a network of his own? Who paid for it, and where did that money come from? What was it built from, and what rules did it enforce? And once it launched, did the crowds actually arrive?

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• 2. A Ban and a Pitch

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  In May 2021, Donald Trump tried an experiment smaller than a whole network. It was a web page called "From the Desk of Donald J. Trump", where he posted short, tweet-like announcements. That experiment followed his bans from Facebook and Twitter in 2021, after the attack on the United States Capitol. The page lasted less than a month. His senior aide Jason Miller confirmed that it would not return.

  According to Reuters, the idea for a bigger replacement came from two cast members of Trump's television show The Apprentice. Wes Moss and Andy Litinsky were described as central to founding Trump Media & Technology Group. They allegedly pitched a social network to Trump in January 2021.

  By October 2021, the company was ready to sell the concept. It published a document describing the platform and citing a poll. In that poll, one-third of the Americans surveyed said they would use a network endorsed by Trump. On the 20th of October, a press release promised a public launch in the first quarter of 2022.

  A limited beta for Apple iOS was slated for November 2021, but that deadline passed. In December, Trump nonetheless claimed that "invited guests" were already using the beta.

  Hours after the press release, something that appeared to be the beta turned up in public. A person identifying as part of the hacker collective Anonymous had used a search tool called Shodan to hunt for domains linked to the company. The search led to what looked like a mobile beta, open to anyone who wanted to sign up. The address spread across social media, and visitors poured in. They created parody accounts and posted rants and memes. Some claimed usernames of prominent people, including Trump, Mike Pence and Jack Dorsey.

  The link was later taken offline. The company's bigger unsolved problem was how to get onto the stock market.

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• 3. Shell Companies and Loans

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  ARC Capital, a Shanghai-based firm that specializes in listing Chinese companies on American stock markets, helped create the vehicle meant to take Trump's company public. That vehicle was Digital World Acquisition Corp, usually shortened to DWAC. It was a special-purpose acquisition company, a firm formed to raise money and then merge with a private business. The SEC had investigated ARC for misrepresenting shell corporations. ARC also supplied at least $2 million through a Singapore-based fund to get DWAC started.

  China-based banker Abraham Cinta led ARC, and its global links included offices in Shanghai, Wuhan, Mexico City and Jakarta. Bloomberg News called those links "surprising", given Trump's comments about foreign countries. Some investors were surprised to learn that their money was financing a Trump company.

  Patrick Orlando, DWAC's chief executive, was a Florida-based financier and a former Deutsche Bank trader. He also ran Yunhong Holdings, also called Yunhong International, a Wuhan-based company registered in the Cayman Islands tax haven. In an October 2021 SEC filing, Yunhong said it aimed to "capitalize on growing opportunities created by consumer/lifestyle businesses that have their primary operations in Asia." Reuters also quoted a deleted 2020 ARC presentation about crafting a Wuhan-based SPAC for a client.

  Yunhong was liquidated in December 2021, yet its backers stayed involved with DWAC and Truth Social. Another backer, Brazilian parliamentarian Luiz Philippe of Orléans-Braganza, became DWAC's chief financial officer. He is a monarchist allied with Jair Bolsonaro.

  In December 2021, Trump Media stood on the brink of collapse. The Guardian reported that it then received two loans totaling $8 million from obscure entities with ties to Putin. Paxum Bank supplied $2 million. The bank is partly owned by Anton Postolnikov, a relation of Aleksandr Smirnov. Smirnov is a former Russian government official who now runs the maritime company Rosmorport. An ostensibly separate entity, ES Family Trust, supplied the other $6 million. Its director was also the director of Paxum Bank at the time.

  By March 2023, prosecutors in the Southern District of New York were investigating those Russian ties. The Guardian reported that they were examining whether accepting the money broke money laundering statutes. The Washington Post added that Trump Media paid a $240,000 finder's fee in the arrangement, allegedly to a party associated with Digital World.

  A separate federal probe into DWAC investors turned up a wealthy backer allegedly linked to moving assets from Russia, Ukraine and China. The money was reportedly routed into the Caribbean and through places such as Hong Kong, the United Kingdom and Belize. In a government transcript, an informant called the process "the full Singapore with a double dip, as we call it." The informant said the U.K. was included "just to give it that added cleanliness and polishing off."

  In June 2023, prosecutors charged three Florida men with insider trading allegedly tied to DWAC and the 2021 merger deal.

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• 4. Borrowed Code

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  On the 21st of October 2021, the Software Freedom Conservancy said it suspected Truth Social of breaking the license on Mastodon, a free and open-source social network program. The license, called AGPLv3, expects source code to be offered to all users. The Mastodon developers formally asked Truth Social to comply. It published its source code as a ZIP file on its website on the 12th of November 2021. On the 22nd of February 2022, the download moved to the legal section of the site. People with no connection to the company later uploaded a mirror to GitHub.

  Mastodon sits at the heart of the product. Truth Social runs a custom version as its back end, with several features removed, including polls and post visibility options. The front end comes from Soapbox Technology and is called Soapbox. TMTG also advertised for developers who know Elixir, the language used to build Pleroma, a social networking program compatible with Mastodon. Users write posts called "Truths" and share other people's posts as "ReTruths", echoing tweets and retweets.

  The service first ran on RightForge, a hosting company that calls itself "The first global Internet infrastructure company committed to American principles online." In December 2021, TMTG announced a partnership with the Canadian video platform Rumble, which already supplied cloud services to the beta. In April 2022, TMTG said the service would move to Rumble's cloud. Hive, a company that uses machine learning to filter unacceptable posts, handled moderation. By June 2022, Cloudflare delivered the service's traffic on mobile and web. Reuters reported that Fastly had refused to take Truth Social as a customer.

  Getting onto phones brought its own friction. A web app launched in May 2022 with geographic restrictions. On the 30th of August 2022, Google said Truth Social's moderation fell short of its standards for Google Play. It cited its policies against content with physical threats and incitement to violence. On the 12th of October 2022, Google approved the app after the platform adopted stronger moderation policies.

  The company operates from Sarasota, Florida, and was reported to have about 40 employees in March 2022. Devin Nunes, a former California Republican congressman, heads it. Talking Points Memo said he earned $750,000 a year in 2022. In October 2024, ProPublica reported that a whistleblower warned the board about programming work outsourced to Mexico. The letter cited worries about the quality of the work and a break from "America first" principles.

  In July 2024, TMTG said it was buying streaming technology, with Louisiana energy magnate James E. Davison involved through a business called JedTec LLC. Davison had received a $17 million federal grant in 2019 to build roads. In August, the company announced Truth+, a streaming service with no launch date.

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• 5. Rules of Speech

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  Truth Social launched as a "big tent" platform without political censorship. It promised "free expression" and no "discriminating on the basis of political ideology."

  The terms of service published in October 2021 said the company was not legally responsible for "the content, accuracy, offensiveness, opinions or reliability" of what users posted. Some commentators noted that this immunity appeared to rest on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Trump had firmly opposed that law during his first presidency.

  The same terms barred users from certain criticism of the service. Users could not "disparage, tarnish, or otherwise harm, in our opinion, us and/or the Site." The company also reserved the right to suspend accounts and "take appropriate legal action." Rolling Stone noticed the tension with the promise of an open platform. The clause was removed in late 2022. Sexual content remains forbidden. The platform has also blocked parody-named accounts and accounts making death threats.

  The New York Times placed Truth Social among the existing alt-tech platforms and doubted that it could compete. BBC journalist James Clayton saw a possibly more successful version of Parler and Gab. He called it an attempt by Trump to win back his "megaphone." Jason Miller, a former Trump advisor and now CEO of Gettr, said it would make Facebook and Twitter "lose even more market share." Gab said its users could follow Trump on a reserved Gab account.

  CNN's Chris Cillizza wrote that the platform was doomed to fail. Noah Berlatsky of The Independent called it a "potential threat to democracy." The Forward worried about antisemitism, noting that similar platforms such as Parler, Gab and Telegram had become known for hosting it.

  In June 2022, several accounts were banned after posting about the investigation of the Capitol attack and the televised January 6 hearings. In August 2022, the consumer rights group Public Citizen reported that Truth Social shadowbanned liberal and progressive users who disagreed with the site's narrative. A shadowban hides a user's posts without telling the user. The group said some conservative content was swept up as well. It also reported bans on content mentioning abortion and the January 6 hearings. It judged the moderation substantially more limiting than Twitter's and warned of an echo chamber of violent views.

  Axios reported that the platform gave a verified account to Nick Fuentes, a white nationalist advocate who is banned from Twitter and Facebook.

  On the 11th of August 2022, a gunman named Ricky Shiffer tried to storm the FBI offices in Cincinnati, Ohio. He wore body armor and carried a nail gun and an AR-15 style rifle. After a police pursuit, he was killed in a standoff. In the days before, following the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago, he had posted on Truth Social about wanting violence. He called for the killing of FBI agents. He also reportedly posted afterward about his failed attempt.

  Some users then claimed, without evidence, that the attack was a false flag. One was a verified account with 74,000 followers whose owner said he designed the site.

  In August 2023, Truth Social notified the FBI that Craig DeLeeuw Robertson had used the platform to threaten President Joe Biden's life. Robertson had made death threats against several people. He was a registered Republican who called himself a "Maga Trumper" and posted about a rifle he named a "democrat eradicator." He was later shot and killed in an armed standoff with FBI agents.

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• 6. Launch and Slump

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  On the 21st of February 2022, Truth Social arrived on Apple iOS and rose to number one on the App Store's top charts. A beta test with 500 users had run earlier that month. CEO Devin Nunes had said the platform would not fully open until late March. A backlog of applicants meant that about 500,000 people who tried to register were automatically waitlisted.

  The app was installed 872,000 times in its first week. A month later, weekly signups had dropped to about 60,000, a fall of more than 90%, according to TheWrap. Weekly visits to truthsocial.com fell too, from a level of 6 million per week.

  The launch drew harsh notices. A day after it opened, The Washington Post called it "a disaster", citing the waitlists and extended outages. A week later, Newsweek found some early adopters losing interest because of thin numbers and poor engagement. Others were willing to persevere. Trailar, a British automotive solar power company, complained that the app's logo resembled its own "T" logo.

  In early March 2022, Trump's account had only 140,000 followers. That was less than 0.2% of the audience he had on Twitter before his ban. The Daily Dot reported that the iOS app had slid from first place in downloads to number 84. The Daily Beast reported that Trump was dissatisfied with the network's progress. Severe and persistent scaling problems were limiting its growth.

  Bloomberg News reported in early April that DWAC shares had fallen 31% since the app's launch and 64% from their all-time high. Business Insider described Truth Social as "like a conservative ghost town that had been overrun by bots." A BBC reporter in the United States who tried to sign up that month landed on a waitlist.

  On the 4th of April, it emerged that Josh Adams, the chief of technology, and Billy Boozer, the chief of product development, had left. The Washington Post said the platform was "falling apart." The Guardian compared it with Trump Steaks and Trump Vodka. By late April, MarketWatch counted around 513,000 daily active users.

  SimilarWeb ranked the iOS app at number 49 among social networking apps in early June 2022. By October 2022, it had sunk to number 75. In May 2023, its rank swung wildly between 18 and 153.

  Trump Media has never reported how many people use Truth Social, so outside estimates fill the gap. SimilarWeb estimated 5 million visitors per month in February 2024, with 1 million active users per month in the United States. On the 25th of March 2024, the day the company's stock began trading, Truth Social drew 277,000 U.S. visitors. Reddit drew 32 million.

  By April 2024, daily active U.S. users had fallen 19% over a year, to around 113,000. Over the same period, Twitter's figure fell 11% to 34 million, Reddit's rose 17% to 31.4 million, and Threads' rose 5% to 3.5 million. Monthly visits from May 2023 to April 2024 were just over 4 million, down 39% from the year before. In an FEC filing, the company said that traditional measures such as visitor counts, revenue per user and ad impressions "might not align with the best interests" of the company or its stockholders.

  During Trump's second term, daily active users rose to 359,000 in May 2025, according to SimilarWeb figures reported by CNN. X had 131.9 million, Threads 112.9 million and Reddit 66.2 million. Estimates in early 2025 put monthly active users at 6.3 million. YouGov ranked Truth Social 38th among popular social apps and websites in October 2025. In February 2026, Similarweb placed the website 24th among U.S. social networks by traffic.

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• 7. Ledger and Listing

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  As of May 2022, Truth Social had no advertising revenue, and TMTG warned that it "expects to incur significant losses into the foreseeable future." In late August 2022, Fox Business reported that RightForge, the original hosting company, said it was owed money and threatened legal action. In early September, DWAC's shareholders granted up to six more months to complete the deal. Its shares traded at $24, far below a 2021 high of $175. Politico's Jack Shafer wrote of a "slow-cooking financial disaster that has been simmering in Donald Trump's business Crock-Pot."

  On the 24th of September, Reuters reported that investors had withdrawn commitments after a deadline expired on the 20th. On the 3rd of November, DWAC postponed its shareholder vote on the merger for a sixth time.

  In January 2023, the New York Times reported that Truth Social now carried advertising, but only for niche products and without major brands. It put the burn rate at around $1.7 million per month. In September 2023, DWAC postponed the merger deadline again. In October 2023, it disclosed that it would refund the $1 billion it had raised for TMTG. That triggered speculation about the platform's eventual demise.

  A November 2023 disclosure showed that management had "substantial doubt" about the company's ability to pay its bills. Its accounting firm had similar doubt about whether it could stay in business. The Hollywood Reporter put cumulative losses between $31.5 million and $60.5 million, depending on how the accounts were read. Some outlets had reported higher losses, and TMTG sued them for defamation. During the 2024 campaign, Trump's personal FCC disclosure for 2023 listed the site's value at $5-25 million.

  In June 2022, federal regulators began investigating whether TMTG had illegally coordinated with DWAC before DWAC went public. A federal grand jury was empaneled, and TMTG said it was cooperating. Trump left the company's board on the 8th of June, before the subpoenas were issued. The investigation delayed the planned merger.

  In August 2022, Will Wilkerson filed a whistleblower submission with the SEC. He was one of the company's earliest employees and its senior vice president of operations. His submission alleged fraudulent misrepresentations in violation of federal securities laws. The company dismissed him in October 2022.

  The name itself caused trouble. "Truth Social" was applied for and registered as a trademark in the European Union within a week of the announcement. That could block the service from operating in most of Europe. At the end of August 2022, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office denied the company's own application because two companies already use the term.

  On the 15th of February 2024, the SEC approved the merger. It declared DWAC's registration statement effective after markets closed on Wednesday, the 14th of February. The merged company listed on Nasdaq under the ticker DJT, after Trump's initials. Shares rose quickly, giving the company a nominal value of $4.48 billion. They then fell, losing 20% in a single day after the company announced its results for the previous year.

  On the 4th of September 2024, shares closed below $17. That valued Trump's majority stake at under $2 billion on paper. Trump could not sell his shares or use them as collateral until six months after the merger. The stock has been called a "meme stock", with early gains driven by speculators and small investors loyal to Trump.

  On the 1st of April 2024, TMTG told the SEC it had lost over $58 million in 2023. Its only income was $4 million of advertising on Truth Social. Its largest expense was more than $39 million in interest payments. For the first quarter of 2024, it reported $770,000 in revenue, down from $1.1 million a year earlier. It also reported $327.6 million in losses. About $311 million of that came from noncash expenses tied to converting promissory notes when the company went public. Roughly half of the $12.1 million in operating losses were merger-related costs.

  In February 2025, TMTG reported a net loss of $401 million on $3.6 million in revenue for 2024. It also said CEO Devin Nunes received $47 million in compensation. Quarterly revenue in 2025 stayed under $1 million, at $821,000, $883,300 and $972,900. The third quarter's net loss was $54.8 million, up from $19.2 million a year earlier, with $20.3 million in legal expenses.

  In February 2026, the filing for fiscal year 2025 showed a net loss of $712.1 million on $3.7 million in revenue.

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• 8. Posts and Visitors

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  Trump's second post on Truth Social came on the 28th of April 2022: "I'M BACK! #COVFEFE", a nod to the covfefe meme. Until then he had been a sparing user, despite his role in marketing the platform. He soon began posting more often.

  Elon Musk's bid for Twitter shaped that spring. Many commentators expected a Musk-run Twitter to reduce demand for Truth Social. In late April 2022, Musk noted that Truth Social's iOS downloads had topped those of Twitter and TikTok. He said the service existed only because of Twitter's limits on free speech. He called it a "terrible name" and joked that it should be renamed "Trumpet." On the 30th of April, the app returned to number one among free iOS apps, with Twitter at number 2.

  DWAC shares had fallen after Musk first announced his intention to buy Twitter. Nunes later said Trump had encouraged Musk to buy. Musk denied it. "This is false," he said. "I've had no communication, directly or indirectly, with Trump, who has publicly stated that he will be exclusively on Truth Social."

  Musk said he would reverse Twitter's ban on Trump if his bid succeeded. Nunes answered that Trump was committed to Truth Social and would not return, even if unbanned. In July, Musk said he no longer intended to buy, and DWAC shares rose. He went through with the purchase in October 2022. After a public poll in which a majority wanted the ban lifted, Trump's account was restored in November.

  Trump did not post to Twitter for nearly a year, saying he preferred Truth Social. On the 25th of August 2023, he posted to X about his arrest in Georgia. It was his first use of social media outside Truth Social in some years.

  On the 6th of May 2022, Trump answered the New York attorney general's demand for his cell phones with a court filing. It said Truth Social had recently given him a phone that he used only to post there. Reports also describe a licensing agreement with TMTG. It requires Trump to use Truth Social as his primary platform and to wait at least six hours before reposting material elsewhere, with exceptions for political activities.

  In early August 2022, downloads jumped after the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago. When a heavily redacted affidavit about the search was published, Trump responded on Truth Social. His first line was "Affidavit heavily redacted!!!" He called it a public relations subterfuge by the FBI and the Department of Justice. Commentator Barbara McQuade observed that such posts could weaken his defense. Days later he posted a run of sixty messages. News sources said they marked a sharp rise in intensity and explicitly referenced QAnon and 4chan conspiracy theories.

  On the 4th of December 2022, Trump posted about the 2020 election. He said fraud "allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution." Multiple parties condemned the remark, the White House among them. Damon Linker wrote in The Week that Trump had "finally jumped the shark." Trump later denied calling for the Constitution's termination. He maintained that any election misconduct should be undone.

  After special counsel Jack Smith indicted Trump on charges related to the 2020 election, Trump posted in August 2023: "IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I'M COMING AFTER YOU!" Investigators referred the remark to the judge in the case and sought a protective order.

  In April 2024, a New York court held Trump in contempt over Truth Social posts about his hush money trial. The posts had violated a gag order. To comply with the court, he deleted them.

  In October 2025, after the No Kings protests, Trump posted an AI-generated video of himself flying a fighter jet. In it, he dropped liquid feces on protesters. The video drew outrage and ridicule. House Speaker Mike Johnson defended it as "satire" meant to make a "point."

  Other visitors were less welcome to some and more playful to others. In February 2022, Axios found official-looking accounts for Fox News, TMZ, the National Football League, NASA and NASCAR. None had been created by the named organizations, and they carried a "bot" label. The Fox News account was later verified by the platform. By April 2022, a New York Times bot account was labeled "The Failing NY Times", and a CNN account was labeled "CNN (Parody)."

  On the 16th of June 2022, California Governor Gavin Newsom announced on Twitter that he had joined Truth Social. He said he would call out Republican lies, and his first post addressed America's red state murder problem. As of 2024, his verified account still existed and he was semi-active.

  In October 2023, the Biden-Harris campaign opened an account called "BidenHQ." It said on Twitter that it found the idea "very funny." Observers saw an exercise in trolling Trump. Two days later, Axios reported that the account had more followers than the Trump campaign's. In July 2024, after Joe Biden withdrew and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris, the account became "HarrisHQ." Harris became the Democratic nominee and ultimately lost the general election to Trump.

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