Trump’s Truth Social sign-ups have cratered ‘by 93 per cent’ since app’s launch

Former president has yet to post on his own app

Donald Trump’s beleaguered social media platform, Truth Social, has seen a reported 93 per cent drop in downloads since it launched last month.

Analysts from tech company Sensor Tower found a drop of almost 810,000 users since Truth Social launched on 21 February, with about 870,000 installs in its first week, and as little as 60,000 more recently.

“This is down 93 per cent from its launch week, when it saw 872,000 installs during the week of Feb. 21,” said Stephanie Chan, a mobile insights strategist, told The Wrap. “We estimate that Truth Social has so far reached approximately 1.2 million installs since its launch.”

The analysis from Sensor Tower, a company that monitors app performance and data, comes almost a month after sources close to Mr Trump told the DailyBeast that he had been overheard complaining about Truth Social since its launch in February.

“What the f*** is going on”, Mr Trump reportedly complained. He also mentioned negative press about Truth Social, and the lack of users.

When Truth Social launched in February, tens of thousands of people were reportedly bounced onto a waiting list, with the app facing technical difficulties.

In some circumstances, it has taken weeks for users to be granted access to the app, and Mr Trump himself has not taken to using it himself, beyond an initial post last month.

“We live in a world where the Taliban has a huge presence on Twitter, yet your favorite American president has been silenced. This is unacceptable,” Mr Trump said ahead of the app’s launch.

“I’m excited to soon begin sharing my thoughts on TRUTH Social and to fight back against Big Tech.”

The Twitter look-alike was billed as an answer to so called bans on both “free speech” and the former president by Twitter and Facebook in the aftermath of the Capitol riot and claims of election fraud in 2020. 

Truth Social has blamed “millions of millions” of users signing up last month as the reason for many users being forced to wait for access. That figure has been disputed however.

“Not millions and millions,” wrote one Twitter user on 5 March. “I just signed up half-hour ago and its barely over 1M. The count in the email validation was under 1M.”

The Independent has contacted the Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), the parent company of Truth Social, for comment.