Is Trump a blogger or a social object?

John Gruber on Trump’s preferred (and owned) social media platform, Truth Social:

What I’ve realized is that Truth Social is essentially just Trump’s blog. Truth Social is exceedingly unpopular when judged as a social network; but it’s exceedingly successful as a blog. All the other people using Truth Social are effectively reading his blog and shitposting comments and memes in response to his posts, trying to get his attention. I’ve been thinking about this for a few weeks, and in that time, Trump’s own posts on Truth Social have made the news on a near-daily basis. I’ve never once, ever, seen a post from anyone else on Truth Social make the news. Trump is not just the one and only person of consequence using it, his is the one and only account on Truth Social that you ever, ever hear about.

John’s take is amusing, and makes a certain amount of sense. But it’s not quite accurate. There’s no doubt that Trump is the dominant personality on Truth Social, and that it orbits around him. But there are many other posters and communities on there, and many of them are getting decent traction within the network itself. It’s just that those discussions and posts aren’t considered newsworthy. So, they don’t make it into the media.

Life on Truth Social

However, it doesn’t take much poking around to see that the reality is a little more complex than that. I, like many journalists, have a burner account there, just to keep an eye on what’s happening. And this is just a random selection of posts from my For You feed:

This is the completely untrained feed — I never interact with anything on the platform, so I’m just seeing the algorithmic base.

It’s clear that what gets traction there are posts that sing to the choir, while dunking on their enemies. It’s a classic niche political community, a space where the MAGA faithful can go, and spend time with like-minded folks, with little chance of being confronted with opposing views on any subject. It’s a bubble, a hermetically sealed community of a particular slice of US political life.

Trump as social object

Where does Trump fit in? Well, online communities tend to form around social objects, something (like a hobby, fandom, sports team or profession) that is their common point of reference and reason for engaging. In this context, Truth Social is a social network whose social object is Trump himself.

It is quite genuinely the most cult-like social media platform I’ve ever encountered. For all the current discourse about Bluesky and X, I suspect you’ll learn a lot more about the MAGA faithful by looking at what’s getting engagement on Truth Social.