Hello again, and welcome back to Fast Company’s Plugged In.
When last Saturday’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner was disrupted by a would-be assassin, an event intended to celebrate the First Amendment descended into chaos. After President Donald Trump and other administration officials were whisked to safety, it was unclear whether the festivities would resume. More than an hour later, White House Correspondents’ Association President Weijia Jiang returned to the dais to acknowledge that Trump had posted that the night was over but would be rescheduled.
“This is a room full of reporters,” she said. “So I know you’ve all seen the president’s tweet.” Then she immediately corrected herself: She was talking about Trump’s Truth Social post, not one on Twitter/X.
It almost didn’t matter. Yes, Trump had posted his announcement on the site he cofounded after being banned from Twitter and Facebook in the aftermath of a throng of his supporters storming the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. But in screengrab form, his message was instantly omnipresent on Twitter/X, Threads, and beyond. The same has been true of countless previous Truth Social posts, including Trump sharing an AI meme of himself looking like Jesus, threatening to eradicate Iran, announcing his firings of Cabinet secretaries Pam Bondi and Kristi Noem, and on and on. Even on Bluesky, where the population of Trump fans must be close to zero, legions of users share his rants in order to hate on them.
The power of Trump’s Truth Social megaphone has surprised me. When social media’s overlords deemed his use of their platforms to incite violence to be beyond the pale in 2021, I was relieved. I was dismayed when their “permanent” bans were undone less than two years later. And then I was relieved again when Trump chose to mostly post on Truth Social, which I figured would greatly limit his reach.
But Trump’s current online presence has little to do with Truth Social. It turns out that it’s possible to dominate the conversation regardless of the social network you’re on—at least if you’re Donald Trump.
As a media presence unto itself, Truth Social is dinky, averaging 700,000 global daily active users in April, according to market intelligence firm Sensor Tower. That’s 0.35% of X’s 200 million and 0.38% of the 185 million on Threads. Though it positions itself as a bastion of free speech and offers groups on topics such as fitness, photography, and dogs, the site is resolutely Trump-centric. Memes boosting him and bashing his adversaries are plentiful, but some discontent over the Iran war is also apparent.
