Trump's official social network, Truth Social, is so far a dud

Truth Social launched a few weeks back, but it's not going anywhere and Trump is reportedly upset about it.

In an appearance at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando last week, Trump said the app's launch was still ongoing. "It's slowly been opened, people are getting on and they're loving the product and we're getting a voice," he claimed to a reporter from the pro-MAGA Right Side Broadcasting Network.

"It's been an incredible success," he claimed. "We have hundreds of thousands of people trying to get on and we're doing it very slowly."

There's a lot of wishful thinking about Trump's "fading appeal" out there, and I figure more mundane reasons are sinking it.

First, other right-wing social media sites have recovered from rough starts and saturated their limited markets. The action is already there.

Second, it doesn't feel like a Trump social network. It's built entirely around his "stolen election" conspiracy: posts are called "truths" and retweets "retruths". It's so oriented to this one message that it feels less like a public square for conservatives and more like a campaign event.

Third, it's run by Devin Nunes. Putting such a stupid political commissar in charge of a tech/media company burdens it from the top down, and Nunes' brief pre-politics career helping run the family farm makes a joke of his operational inexperience. It's a month in and there's still no Android app and no significant progress on its post-launch capacity problems.