Tuesday, 7th June 2022 at 12:10pmTruth is out there. Sort of.

In the final year of his presidency, Donald Trump tweeted 12,007 times. That’s an average of almost 33 tweets per day. Over the course of his busiest day on Twitter, he is reported to have issued 200 posts. Altogether, he unleashed more than 25,000 messages into the Twittersphere while in office. Mr Trump cuts a divisive figure but one thing we can all agree on: that is some prolific tweeting.

Further analysis of Trump’s Twitter habits show that his activity ramped up significantly during his 4-year spell in the White House. During the final 6 months of his term, his Twitter usage increased almost 500% compared to the first 6 months.

Like it or loathe it, people were listening. Trump’s official Twitter handle amassed 88.7 million followers by 2021, up from 2.98 million in 2015, when he announced his presidential campaign.   

Social media – and Twitter in particular – was a crucial weapon in the Trump’s communications arsenal, so the suspension of many of his accounts following the infamous Capitol attack represented a devastating blow to his political ambitions.

In typically bullish style, Trump responded by announcing that he would be launching his own platform, Truth Social. His bold claim was that Truth would “stand up to the tyranny of big tech,” providing a “big tent” forum “encouraging open, free and honest global conversations.”

The platform is currently only available in the US.

A lack of geographical reach is really just the tip of the iceberg though. A catalogue of errors and embarrassments have dogged Truth since its inception. In November 2021, the platform missed its schedule for open beta testing. Soon after, a hacker from the Anonymous collective made the closed beta platform available to the public leading to a spate of uninvited users trolling the service and creating parody accounts under the names of high-profile figures including Trump and Mike Pence.

Despite aiming for a public launch in the first quarter of 2022, Truth was unavailable on both android devices and web browsers until May, when the web version finally went live.

Following Truth’s Apple iOS launch in February 2022, the platform was branded “a disaster” by the Washington Post. Meanwhile, more than half a million aspiring users were waitlisted as the company struggled to cope with a fast-mounting backlog of applicants. Given that the overall interest in the platform was tepid at best (it received less than 900,000 downloads in its first week), Truth’s inability to meet initial demand hinted strongly to a lack of adequate preparation.  

With site visits dwindling from a base of 6m per week to just 2m after a month of operation, growth problems have persisted for Truth. Scalability issues and limited interest preceded the departure of the platform’s chief technology and chief product development officers, and In April 2022 MarketWatch reported that the total average daily userbase barely exceeded half a million.

Truth has currently failed to secure any advertising revenue, which is unsurprising considering the low userbase and the political baggage that brands would be burdened with if they chose to buy up media space.

It seems that even the exclusivity of Trump’s voice will hold limited value for Truth. He is free to leverage other social platforms to get his message out provided he observes a 6-hour time lag, or immediately if his content meets stipulations in a wide-ranging contractual loophole.   

While Trump claims “It’s been an incredible success,” the numbers behind the Truth launch paint a very different picture. Privately, he is said to be furious that things aren’t going to plan.

Experts are baffled as to why the uptake has been so exceedingly poor, but with investors coughing up a billion dollars to fund the venture, a lack of cash cannot be cited as an explanation.

Should Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter go through, the outlook for Truth could get even worse. Mr Musk has made no secret of his desire to align the medium with his personal ‘free speech absolutist’ ideals and has promised to reinstate Trump’s account. Although the former president claims he will not return to Twitter, it seems hard to believe that he would turn down an opportunity to re-engage with the platform that has served his needs so well, should that opportunity arise.

BBC analyst James Clayton suggests that if Truth was really intended to rival big tech, it was doomed from the outset. “By its very nature the platform is overtly politicised. It is not going to be a talking shop of ideas like Twitter, or a place the whole family is on like Facebook,” he wrote.  

If we're being honnest, Truth looks as though it will forever be consigned to the fringes.