326
Trump’s Truth Social Has Lost $73M Since Launch, New Filing Shows
(www.hollywoodreporter.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 14 Nov 2023
326 points (96.8% liked)
politics
18821 readers
4907 users here now
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
to whom?
who got the money?
The loss is, presumably, the amount of money they spent that year in operating costs, etc.
In business, a loss is when a company’s expenditures are more than its income. It’s not like the money is “lost” as in “missing” or “lost in a bet” at a casino. Truth Social spent more money than it made in 2022, which means they operated at a loss for 2022.
I find it hard to believe that a website the size of Truth Social (i.e. pretty small.... They have a total of 2 million users, a generous 15% of them might be active. It isn't Twitter) managed to rack up $73 million in costs over a single year of operation.
I see two possibilities. Either whoever is hosting them is charging them a stupendously exorbitant amount of money to keep their website online, because they hate them or because they know they have Trump & Co in a vise and can charge whatever they want; or else a lot of "operating costs" look like the inside of various pockets. Perhaps both. Probably both, now that I think about it, though I suspect the latter quite a bit more.
I run an instance of Lemmy with 300 users and it costs me about $223 per year.
They have 6000x more users. So it should cost them about..... $1.5m
(Of course I know that's completely unrealistic and things don't scale like that. Just a fun exercise.)
But yeah that's way too much for a site that only serves 2 million people.
Agree this math adds up like it was done by Trumps property appraisers.
It's easy to do if it's a grift for paying kickbacks by paying well over market rate for services that you can pad the numbers on easily.
There are a number of details in the article which explain where the money went. Did you read it?
There is nothing explaining expenditures at all. They state they downsized and eliminated development of VOD. They also said they probably cannot secure additional financing.
I don't find it that hard to believe they burned through that cash. It's a lot of money but they probably signed massive deals with overpriced, incompetent consultants that subcontracted to overpriced, incompetent outsourcing.
They probably also went nuts on infrastructure again through a few layers of b.s., each of which took a cut.
Anyone who thought a site like this was going to be profitable in first few years, or really ever, is nuts. I mean the man ran a casino into the ground.
So they've paid Trump $73 M for exclusivity and brand. Got it.