Since launching in early 2022, former President Donald Trump‘s Truth Social took in $3.7 million in net sales, and lost $73 million.
The numbers are the first time that any internal financial details on the social platform have been shared publicly, and they suggest that while Trump has made Truth Social his primary social media platform, it has not been translating into meaningful revenue for the tech startup, which is owned by Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG).
The numbers were revealed in a new financial disclosure from TMTG’s SPAC merger partner Digital World Acquisition Corp. The filing revealed that in 2022, Truth Social lost $50 million on just $1.4 million of net sales, and through the first 6 months of this year it brought in $2.3 million, but lost $23 million.
The financial situation of TMTG is such that “TMTG’s independent registered public accounting firm has indicated that TMTG’s financial condition raises substantial doubt as to its ability to continue as a going concern,” according to the filing.
Good. The more the looser loses, the better.
Unsurprisingly it’s pretty murky, but it seems most of the money came from China, then later from Russia, and he didn’t put any in himself.
He seems to be mostly the figurehead, and would gain if it were going well. Which is a common trope for him. Other people put up the money, if it sinks he disavows it, if it works he gets a cut.
There was a clever scheme to sell Truth Social to investors for no less than $1 billion!🤪
The plan failed AFAIK because it was somehow illegal.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-dwac-returning-investor-money-truth-social/
Allegedly there should be another plan, that if successful would raise $250 million for Trump. Not as good as a billion, but still a pretty penny.
Actually it’s a lot more than a pretty penny. 😋
But also allegedly, Trump uses almost $50 million per month, you know private jet and lawyers and all that. So even $250 million, would only last him a measly 5 months!! And some say his current financials are pretty dire, which I hope is true.
While I’d be happy to see Trump Social fail and go away, social media tends to be an unprofitable business. Twitter regularly posted losses, and did so regularly early in it’s existence (source). And Idiots Social isn’t about profits it’s about pushing right wing propaganda. Profits and losses don’t matter, only the platform being available and in the news.
Truth Social is a fork of Mastodon, and Mastodon.world only costs $1200 a month to run. They could have a propaganda arm that at the very least breaks even.
This sounds more like money laundering.
It’s only unprofitable if you run it like an idiot.
So yeah, most social media ventures are unprofitable. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t successful. Profit can be distorted based on how much employees are getting paid.
A business may be unprofitable, but if their CEO is taking in $400k/year, is it really?
Friendly reminder. Truth Social is a fork of Mastodon.
It cost Rudd $1200 to admin and host mastodon.world and Lemmy.world last month. And he has a full time job and family.
73 million, average salary is around 50k in total compensation, works out to 1,460. For the amount of money lost on this vanity project you could have hired the working age population of a village to spend a year planting trees, with paid vacation, 401k matching of about 3% and 80% of health insurance coverage. Still leaving enough left over for weekly Pizza instead of pay raise parties.
I found a reference online claiming that by handtools a human can plant between 800 to 2000 trees a day. I am going to assume they all are bad at their job and can only plant 500 a day. At the end of the year 73,000 trees would been planted. The Pacific Northwest forest has 40,000 trees per square km so our planters could reforest 1.825 square km.
Glad we have our priorities correct as a civilization
