When Twitter decided to ban Donald Trump from its platform, the tycoon had several options before him to appeal or withdraw the offending tweets. Between the two, The Donald chose the more difficult path: to create his personal social media. Truth Social, a dystopian but correct name if you think you just lost the elections due to theft, was founded on February 21, 2022 by the former President. Central to his creation were two former contestants on The Apprentice, the popular reality show in which Trump had to decide which contestant to hire in his company, Wes Moss and Andy Littinsky.
After an auspicious start, 872,000 weekly downloads, the app had an evident growth problem as early as March 2022. A 90% drop in installations: 60,000 weekly, and Trump himself who struggled to re-propose the established numbers on Twitter. As of March, the former US president and founder’s account had garnered just 140,000 followers. On Twitter, 90 million followed the updates of the former White House tenant. The situation has improved in recent months, but last October the app dropped to 75th place among the most downloaded social networking platforms.
Last October, the Pew Research Center, an American research center, conducted an in-depth investigation into Trump’s social network, relating it to six other alternative social media networks: Telegram, Parler, Rumble, Gettr, Bitchute and Gab. The data collected concerns the notoriety among American adults, the regularity with which information is obtained on those platforms, the accuracy of the news reported and the most frequent topics that are treated. In the midst of the coldness of the numbers, also two cross-sections on two policies that characterized the entry into the scene of Truth Social: political impartiality and the moderation of content that is not at all stringent.
Impartiality and content moderation
The requirements on which Trump’s new jewel had to be born were impartiality and soft content moderation. He could not risk becoming like those he has always accused of censorship, the mainstream media, or “lamestream” in Trumpian parlance.
In this sense, however, there is also evidence to the contrary. A report released by Public Citizen, a think tank in defense of consumer rights, reports that many «pro-choice»-themed contents on abortion have been eliminated, in particular posts that contained the hashag «abortion is healthcare». A half freedom of expression, therefore.
The same goes for political impartiality: of the 200 most followed accounts, analyzed by the Pew Research Center, 49% contain indications of being pro Trump in their bios, the highest figure of all alternative social media. Furthermore, 43% accompany being pro Trump with keywords of the US right such as “America first” or “Make America great again”.
Comparison with other social media
Among the alternative social media the best known by American adults is Parler. In fact, at least 35% of those interviewed have heard of it at least once. Telegram and Truth Social follow with 27%. All the other four do not reach 20%, a sign that, for the moment, the large-scale distribution of these applications has not taken place. The average number of people who download these applications onto their mobile phones to receive information is even lower. Around 1.5%, with peaks of over 2% reached only by Telegram, Truth Social and Rumble. A very low figure compared to more traditional and established social media. Facebook is the leader in the sector with 31% of users who log in to be informed, followed by Youtube with 25% and closed by Twitter with 14.
However, the Pew Research Center study shows that, in the new social media, the degree of satisfaction with the accuracy of the news read is much higher than in Facebook, Twitter and Youtube. The survey questions were: «How satisfied are you with the information service on these social media?», «Is the news accurate and accurate?» and “Did they help you better understand a certain topic?”. In first place in all three categories is Rumble, which scored between 70 and 88% approval. Followed by Truth Social, Telegram and Parler.
Finally, among the most discussed topics on the platforms, great attention is paid to current events. Abortion, vaccines, the rights of the LGBTQ+ community, weapons and the attack on Congress are the topics that are most researched, discussed and written about. Only on Truth Social, however, the attacks on Congress have a very high relevance: 62% of the discussions in which the most followed users participated concerned the assault on Capitol Hill, second only to the debate on weapons.