Foreign media: Trump's social platform Truth Social may merge with Musk's X platform

ChainCatcher news, according to Fortune, foreign media reports that Trump’s social platform Truth Social may merge with Musk’s X platform (formerly Twitter). Data shows that Truth Social's revenue in the third quarter of this year was only $2.6 million, with 698,000 monthly active users on mobile and 11.3 million monthly website visits; in contrast, X platform is expected to have an annual advertising revenue of $2 billion, with 70.4 million monthly active users and up to 1 billion monthly website visits.

Erik Nisbet, director of the Center for Communication and Public Policy at Northwestern University, stated that since Musk took over, the content style of X platform has gradually aligned with that of Truth Social. Both platforms promote "freedom of speech" as their selling point, primarily targeting conservative audiences. Data shows that 57% of Truth Social users consider it a daily news source, while 59% do the same for X platform.

In terms of content moderation, X platform still maintains relatively strict standards, banning approximately 5.3 million accounts for violations in the first half of this year. This is mainly because the platform needs to maintain relationships with large corporate advertisers. Truth Social, on the other hand, has almost no advertising business, resulting in relatively lenient content moderation. Industry insiders believe that a potential merger would be more commercially meaningful for Trump, serving as a cash-out exit strategy, with his shareholding currently valued at approximately $3.3 billion.