Did 1.5 billion people rush to get in on Trump’s “Truth Social?”

ByJosh Bernoff

According to the Washington Examiner:

By Tuesday morning, 1.5 billion people had viewed the app in the iPhone App Store, with nearly 400,000 people receiving notices they were placed on a waitlist upon trying to sign up.

Could this be true?

When it comes to numbers, be skeptical

It pays to understand the world that numbers live in, so you know when to be skeptical. So let’s analyze the number “1.5 billion people” and see if it could possibly make sense.

Apple’s installed base of iPhones is 1 billion. While it has an installed base of 1.65 billion for all devices, that includes iPads, Macs, Apple TVs, and Apple watches — and many people have more than one device. It’s reasonable to assume that the total number of Apple users with access to the iPhone App store is pretty close to 1 billion.

So how can 1.5 billion people have viewed the app in the app store?

  • The world’s population is 7.9 billion. If there were actually 1.5 billion people viewing the app, that would be one of every five people on planet Earth.
  • There are 5 billion internet users alive today. Do you think that one in three internet users visited the app store to look at the Truth Social app?
  • There are 118 million iPhone users in the US. Even if every single one of them checked out Truth Social, where did the other 1.4 billion people come from? Do you think that people in the rest of the world care so much about this app that more than a billion of them decided to check it out?
  • Donald Trump received 74 million votes for president in 2020. (Even if you think some were not counted due to fraud, that number is still approximately correct.). Did every single Trump voter arrive at the app store 20 times and fool them into thinking they were 20 different people?

I appears to be true that Truth Social is the number one iOS app right now. But the 1.5 billion number is bullshit.

Is anyone actually using Truth Social?

Everyone I know who tried to connect to Truth Social got put on a waiting list. There are countless articles from journalists who tried to get on.

The Truth Social people would have us believe that the app is working for some people. Here are some screen shots of people who appear to have gotten on:

However, there are no screen shots of anyone interacting with anyone else. (Except the ReTruths of Trump’s first post.)

I believe there is no actual social interaction happening on Truth Social. No one is reacting to anyone else’s posts.

Can you prove me wrong?

Be skeptical

It’s easy enough to check these claims for reasonableness.

Don’t take absurd numbers at face value. And don’t imagine that a technological product exists until you see evidence of it.

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5 Comments

  1. You’re a man after my own heart! I am constantly explaining to clients how ridiculous it is to report that their PR campaigns generated 14 billion impressions — and/or 14 billion engagements. Every time, I have to explain to them that there aren’t that many people on the planet. Not everyone speaks English or has access to electricity, never mind the Internet, and most of them can’t buy or don’t give a shit about whatever it is they are promoting!

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  3. No one knows or can see thru Trump’s ongoing litany of b.s. than our own fearless b.s. detector, Josh. Thanks as always.

    Reply