Column: I spent 24 hours on Trump’s Truth Social so you don’t have to. No wonder it’s tanking

I check out the app store listing a while ago. No way I'm signing up to get spammed on my phone!
Screenshots don't resemble Truth! https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.truthsocial.android.app

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/tv/story/2024-04-03/i-spent-24-hours-on-trump-truth-social-so-you-dont-have-to

You’ve likely heard of former President Donald Trump’s mouthpiece and social media platform, Truth Social. You may have seen headlines that its stock shocked Wall Street with its much-hyped initial public offering. Or that in the week since, it has been hemorrhaging value as investors get a real sense of the company’s worth.

But how many of us know what Truth Social is really like? Judging by the platform’s relatively low number of active users, I’m guessing it’s still a mystery to many Americans. So I joined Truth Social, selflessly going there so you don’t have to.

Twenty-four hours of scrolling through posts from “Truthsayers” on the two-year-old platform explained why the site is tanking. In short, partisan echo chambers are stale, musty spaces that lack the sort of oppositional views needed to make social media tick. Truth Social feels like a MAGA town hall in a ventless conference room, where an endless line of folks step up to the mic to share how the world is out to get them.

The Truth Social feed I experienced was a mix of swaggering gun talk, typo-filled Bible scripture, violent Biden bashing, nonsensical conspiracy theories and more misguided memes about Jan. 6 “hostages,” trans satanists and murderous migrants than anyone should be subjected to in one day. Or ever.

This site has a star, and he garners far more adulation than heat. Thousands of users liked and “ReTruthed” his boasts about a presidential endorsement from Hungarian leader and strongman Viktor Orbán, his complaints about the latest gag order from a judge presiding over one of his many court cases and his link to a Newsweek story about Trump sneakers reselling on EBay for $450,000.

His posts are a mix of loud, Trumpian ALL-CAPS warnings — “UNDER CROOKED JOE BIDEN WE HAVE BECOME A THIRD WORLD NATION”— and run-on, word-salad grievances: “I’ve just posted a 175 Million Dollar Bond with the sadly failing and very troubled State of New York, based on a Corrupt Judge and Attorney General who used a Statute that was never used for this before, where no Jury was allowed, my financial statements were conservative and had a 100% perfect caution/non-reliance clause, there were no victims (except me!), there was no crime or damage, there was only success and HAPPY BANKS.”

To sign up for a Truth Social account, one must consent to receive text “updates” from the platform, and that Google Voice number designed to receive all your trash-bin spam calls and texts won’t work (I tried). Next up is choosing a username. The example given is “LibertyForAll.” Needless to say that handle was unavailable, as was “LibertyForAli.” Once in, it suggested accounts to follow such as Trump, conservative news outlets the Daily Wire and Breitbart, country singer John Rich and right-wing troll @Catturd. I did, and today, I am no smarter for doing so.