After being kicked off Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube early in 2021, former president Donald Trump pledged to launch his own social media platform. About 13 months later, on February 21, 2022, he did just that with the launch of Truth Social.
I downloaded the Truth Social app on launch day and created an account – only to be told I'd been put on a waitlist in spot number 157,120. Three weeks later, on March 14, I was finally allowed to use the app.
And I found…not very much. It was like a conservative ghost town that had been overrun by bots.
Trump Media & Technology Group, the company behind Truth Social, pitches its app as an alternative to the big social media platforms, which banned Trump for inciting violence during the US Capitol insurrection on January 6, 2021.
The signs so far are that Truth Social is a flop.
Since it launched, downloads and time spent on the app have trended downwards. It has slumped from being the number one download on Apple's US App Store to number 173, according to an analysis by Similarweb.
That's partly down to the app's lengthy waitlist, which keeps wannabe users locked out for weeks. But even when I got off the waitlist and into the app, followed the app's most popular users, and scrolled through my feed, there still wasn't much to see or do.
Here's what I found.