Traffic on former president Donald Trump’s Truth Social plunged 29% in just two months as hundreds of thousands of users abandoned the site amid a broader falloff on right-wing websites.
Right-wing media watchdog The Righting reported that Truth Social drew just 2.85 million unique visitors in October, down from it peak of 4.02 million in August, citing Comscore data.
Notably, traffic dropped even as Google made the Truth Social app available for download in October, after blocking it for several months due to insufficient content moderation.
The user plummet coincided with the height of the midterms election campaign, which failed to produce the “red wave” expected by many conservatives.
It was not just Truth Social that saw fewer users. Other conservative friendly social platforms also lost traffic, The Righting reported, with Rumble down 28% from a year ago to 6.59 million users, MeWe down 24% to 1.25 million users, Parler plunging 65% to 404,000 users and Gettr traffic dropping 61% to 294,000 users.
Parler’s traffic collapse came as Kanye “Ye” West announced in mid-October that he would buy the “free speech”-driven social media platform from parent company Parlement Technologies.
In contrast, Elon Musk has claimed that new users are signing on to Twitter, which he took private in late October, at the rate of 2 million per day.
Earlier this month, Musk lifted the ban on Trump’s Twitter account that was put in place after the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol, but the former president has so far not shared his thoughts on his once-favorite platform.
Trump remains in a legal battle with Twitter over his expulsion from the site, along with Facebook and Google’s YouTube. “There’s more to it than just letting him back in, so we want to talk to see if we can figure something out,” John Coale, his attorney, told Bloomberg.
Trump also has a contract with Truth Social that all of his social media posts must appear there first.
Adding fuel to the fire, Musk on Friday tweeted that he would support a 2024 Presidential bid by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, seen as Trump’s chief rival for the Republican nomination at this early stage of the race.
Truth Social was expected to be brought public by now by the special purpose acquisition company Digital World Acquisition Corp., but the move has been delayed multiple times. Last week, shareholders of the blank check company gave the social media company a nine-month extension for closing the deal, The New York Times reported.
Traffic has not only fallen on right-leaning social platforms, but also on conservative news websites, The Righting reported. FoxNews.com, with 73.76 million total visitors in October, saw a 21% year-over-year decline.
FoxNews.com draws about 10 times more visitors than the next most popular site, the Epoch Times, which was one of just two of the top 20 conservative sites The Righting tracked to report a traffic increase, with a 13% gain to 7.4 million visitors. The Washington Examiner, with a 29% gain, drew about 6.8 million visitors.
But the remaining names on the list all saw traffic declines, including a 36% tumble, at NewsMax, a 50% drop at the Daily Caller, a 71% plunge at RedState and a 79% falloff at CNS News.
