Truth Social Could Change Everything

President Donald Trump unveiled Truth Social to the world in 2022. It wasn’t much of a surprise, rumors had been circulating a ‘Trump News’ app of some sort for months. When it was debuted the supposed ‘experts’ scoffed. Mark Zuckerberg actually laughed. Within a year, no one was laughing. Truth Social experienced a meteoric rise in downloads and daily visits. Now in 2023, Truth Social is on the move.

What Trump managed to accomplish with Truth Social is nothing short of extraordinary. This may not seem very obvious from looking at the statistics. Currently, Truth Social has garnered 4.36 million downloads, and approximately 2 million monthly visits. FaceBook boasts a whopping 6.5 billion downloads and 2 billion monthly visits. This might seem to be a no contest, but hold on for just a moment and think about something. There is a right and a wrong way to read statistics. FaceBook is a global giant. Though based in the US, FaceBook has a very strong presence in foreign countries, India for example. Truth Social is pretty much all US based. So when we compare the US statistics we suddenly get a very different picture; FaceBook has a total download count of around 200 million (give or take a few million). With a monthly visit of approximately 100 million (the numbers vary with the source). Still a dominant number over Truth Social, but it does close the gap somewhat. Also bear in mind that it took FaceBook over ten years to achieve these numbers, whereas Truth Social has barely been around for a year.

My point isn’t that Truth Social is posing any real danger to FaceBook or anyone else, I’m just showing you its remarkable growth. How large it will ultimately become remains to be seen. Yet Truth Social has already experienced a faster rate of growth than any of ‘the big three’ in social media. In and of itself this is an impressive feat, but what do I mean when I say Truth Social could change everything? I’m referring to the 2024 election.

It’s been said that history repeats itself and that would hold true here. In this case let’s turn back to 2016. In 2016 Donald Trump disregarded every political rule and in doing so re-wrote the playbook so to speak. Feel however you like about him, it doesn’t change the fact that Trump redefined the Republican Party. The primary factor in doing so was President Trumps use of social media. Back in 2016 there were many media networks that preferred to spend more time on more established candidates, and then candidate Trump was dealing with a lack of media exposure. Most people would’ve just given up, instead Trump decide to change tactics and used social media to get his message out and grow his base. Then candidate Trump famously would make a post, and within minutes his tweets would be plastered all over social media. It was an ingenious way to get essentially ‘free advertising’. Even  popular hosts who couldn’t stand Trump would still air his Twitter posts.

Fast forward to 2020 and there were a lot of factor that led to Trump losing the White House that year. But one major issue facing the President was his inability to control the narrative. Major corporations like Facebook and Twitter outright banned President Trump, making it near impossible for him to be able to connect with voters. Joe Biden won in 2020 not because he ran a better campaign, but simply because of better media exposure.

In 2022 Trump unveiled Truth Social and I believe that Truth Social will be the major catalyst in the 24’ election. Not just based on Truth Social’s expanding popularity, but also because of President Trump himself. Had Truth Social been around in 2020 then the results of the election would have been very different. President Trump will be able to control the narrative and get his message out more effectively. Like I said, Truth Social is a major game-changer. This time President Trump will not be inhibited by censorship, or by a media blackout of any kind.

In short, the 24’ election will come down to whoever is able to dominate social media. Fewer and fewer people are watching major networks. More people are turning to alternative media networks, especially with platforms like X or Truth Social. By the way, this isn’t merely a Republican issue. This also applies very much to the Democratic Party. Take a look at Robert F. Kennedy’s campaign, he went from having 2-3% of the vote to now having double digit support, and growing. Kennedy wisely took advantage of social media to expand his influence, whereas Joe Biden has done a very poor job of getting his message out on media. Instead President Biden is relying on more mainstream media sources, as a result his base is stagnant. If Biden doesn’t reverse course soon, then he very well could be overtaken by Robert Kennedy. All highlighting my point, the 24’ election will come down to a social media war. Truth Social will be at the heart of it all.

On a final note I would like to point out that Truth Social could not only be a catalyst, but also a precursor to a much larger movement. Witness the rise and fall of Twitter before self-professed ‘chief twit’ Elon Musk took the helm and changed it to X. It was generally understood by most that Twitter was a fairly liberal platform. What Musk has done with the platform is turn the platform into a more neutral base. I believe this is strongly influenced by the Truth Social platform. It is quite possible that Trump’s base could expand even further on the X platform. In other words X could be a wildcard on the political scene as well. By incorporating some of the Truth Social crowd and then combining it with users who may not want to be a part of Truth Social but still have conservative leanings, this could filter back into Trumps 24’ campaign.
 Ultimately, the 24’ election will center around social media.