The “free speech” alternative social website is severely outmatched by its mainstream competitors
Truth Social, the social media platform founded by former president and 2024 GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump, has earned just $1.2 million in advertising since its February 2022 launch, according to Trump’s July 6 financial disclosure.
Trump’s latest filing was an update to an earlier one submitted in April with the Office of Government Ethics that showed far less precise information about his finances, according to The Washington Post.
Truth Social launched in February 2022, billing itself as a “free speech” alternative to such popular social media platforms as Twitter and Facebook, which had banned the former president after the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. A study from Pew Research Center later that year found that just 27% of Americans had heard of Truth Social and only 2% used it for news.
By comparison, Twitter reported advertising revenue of $1 billion in the second quarter of 2022, according to the final quarterly filing it made before being acquired and taken private by Elon Musk last year. Social media giant Meta, whose family of apps includes Facebook and Instagram, recorded $28.1 billion in advertising revenue across its services for that same period, according to its quarterly report to the Securities and Exchange Commission.
A planned merger between blank check company Digital World Acquisition and Truth Social’s parent company, Trump Media & Technology Group, was announced in October 2021. At the time, the merger valued Trump Media & Technology Group at $1.7 billion.
In his April disclosure form to the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, however, Trump said the company was worth no more than $25 million.
Shortly after the 2021 merger was announced, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and Financial Industry Regulatory Authority launched an investigation into the transaction, which put the plan on hold. Earlier this month, Digital World Acquisition announced it reached an agreement with the SEC’s Division of Enforcement to settle the agency’s investigation into the company, under the condition that the company pay a $18 million penalty after the merger closes, according to a filing.
And in June, three investors in the blank check company acquiring Trump Media & Technology Group were charged by prosecutors with insider trading, according to The Washington Post. About a month before the planned merger was made public, these investors allegedly used their advance knowledge of the proposed transaction in a scheme that netted them $22 million in profits. The SEC also filed a lawsuit, charging the three men with insider trading.
The men had been notified of the planned merger by Digital World Acquisition Chairman and CEO Patrick Orlando in June 2021, according to the SEC’s lawsuit. Orlando was not accused of any wrongdoing; neither Trump the former president nor his company were not named in the indictment.
Orlando was fired by Digital World in March, although he remains a director at the company, according to Axios.
“Due to the unprecedented headwinds faced by the company, the board agreed it was in the best interest of its shareholders to select a new management team to execute an orderly succession plan and set strategic operating procedures for the Company in this new phase,” Digital World Acquisition said in a March press release.