Truth Social, the pro-Trump social media site that he owns and posts on, never went anywhere. It lost $31.6m in the first two years of operation, Reuters reports—it has updated its headline after earlier reporting that the loss was $73m. Now that the former President has returned to Twitter anyway, there's little hope for the network.
Trump had announced the launch of his social media app in Oct 2021, saying it would "stand up to Big Tech" companies such as Twitter and Facebook that previously barred him. In 2022, Truth Social posted a loss of $50 million, with net sales of just $1.4 million. It lost $23 million in the first half of this year, with net sales of $2.3 million. Trump Media & Technology Group's (TMTG) independent registered public accounting firm has indicated that the financial condition raises substantial doubt as to its ability to continue as a going concern, according to the filing.
One of the odd dynamics in all this is that the right never wanted a place to call its own: it wanted Twitter, to the point where a reactionary billionaire offered vastly more than it was worth to buy it and operate it according to their priorities. Their idée fixe was the notion of a privately-operated public town square that could be taken over. The result is three different wrecks—the site, the business, the buyer's reputation—but at least the libs are owned and Trump is back.
Devin Nunes, the hyperligitious Truth Social CEO who left office to run the show, is apparently not doing well in his defamation suits. Most recently, lawyers from The Washington Post claim that Nunes destroyed evidence in the case.
UPDATE: Truth Social is suing 20 news companies who reported this news, claiming that it is fabricated and that the postings across the internet were a "coordinated attack." This post's headline has been updated to reflect that Reuters, the source, has corrected the size of Truth Social's reported loss from $73m to $31.6m.
Lawyers for Trump Media & Technology Group Corp. said in a lawsuit filed Monday in state court in Sarasota County, Florida, that the number was "an utter fabrication" and accused 20 news outlets of a "deliberate, malicious, and coordinated attack" against Truth Social.
Outlets including the Guardian and Reuters posted stories early last week about Truth Social's financial condition, citing a regulatory filing by its merger partner, Digital World Acquisition Corporation, a special-purpose acquisition company. Later, at least some of the outlets, including Reuters, posted corrections on their stories.
Here's Reuters' correction, which explains its apparent mistake:
(This Nov. 13 story has been corrected to say that Truth Social reported a loss of $31.6 mln, not $73 million, since its launch to mid-2023 in the headline and in paragraph 1, and to say that the platform posted a profit of $50.5 mln in 2022, not loss, in paragraph 3)
