Topic: WorldNetDaily
Bob Unruh wrote a press release for Donald Trump's social media outlet masquerading as a March 11 "news" article. But first, he served up a dubious history of Trump's relationship with social media:
President Trump was censored from virtually all the mainstream social media companies because his political views conflicted with theirs back when he was president. They condemned his perspectives as "misinformation" while claiming their own opinions were "fact."
In fact, Trump was banned from those social media companies because he incited an insurrection against the government he headed because he couldn't accept the reality that he lost an election. And Trump's rampant spreading of misinformation has been irrefutably documented, and pointing out that misinformation was not an"opinion." Anyway, back to Unruh's rah-rah PR effort:
And it wasn't long before reports were appearing about his plans to create his own platform, and Truth Social is in the process now of signing up consumers.
And it's hitting on all cylinders with the public, reveals a new analysis by Just the News.
Just the News chief John Solomon, for example, reported he put a story on Twitter this week – about 20 confirmed cases of voting illegalities and irregularities during the 2020 presidential election – and got 871 likes and 551 retweets – from a total of 866,500 followers.
But when the same details were posted on Truth Social, he immediately got 1,480 likes and 1,030 re-truths, even though there were only 24,700 followers on his account.
"Conservatives say the early Truth Social anecdotes seem to support two theories they have had for year: Twitter has been throttling or shadow-banning some content, while new platforms that allow free speech are booming with engagement from people tired of the censorship," he explained.
[...]
He ridiculed legacy media claims that Truth Social is getting a slow start.
"A handful of liberal reporters get an account on Truth, can't attract any followers because no one wants to hear them, and then they report it isn't working," he explained.
But Unruh has censored any mention of all the problems Truth Social has faced since it launched last fall. As we documented when the Media Research Center similarly censored it, Truth Social was immediately overrun by trolls upon its early launch last fall and appears to violate the terms of the open-source software that underpins it. When the website officially launched in February, a reporter was able to get the @realDonaldTrump handle (it has since been stripped from him), software bugs created a massive backup in signups, and its terms of service censors users who "disparage, tarnish, or otherwise harm, in our opinion, us and/or the Site." So much for it being a "free speech" operation. And, actually, the statement that non-conservatives "an't attract any followers because no one wants to hear them" proves further that it's a right-wing echo chamber.
Nevertheless, Unruh continued in rah-rah mode:
He also cited radio host and TV commentator Dan Bongino, whose army on Twitter is 2.4 million strong.
In a few weeks, he's gathered one-tenth that on Truth Social.
But this week his Twitter message "Panic Breaks Out Over The Ukraine Bio-Labs Story" got 554 likes and 185 retweets while the same message on Truth Social got 1,550 likes and 488 re-truths.
"The traffic to the site and to the show is off the chart," Bongino explained to Just the News.
Is that the same Russian propaganda conspiracy theory WND itself was spreading? Not sure we've beas proud of spreading that as Bongino is.
Writing PR propganda pieces that hide inconvenient facts is not the way to credibilty and profitably WND needs right now.
