Cheng Xin | Getty Images News | getty images
The company behind social-media network Truth Social is launching a service that will give paying customers interested in market-changing information “licensed, real-time access” to posts from President Donald Trump and other top accounts, the company said Thursday.
Trump’s family is the largest shareholder Trump Media and Technology GroupThe public company that operates Truth Social. President’s @realdonaldtrump According to SEO.ai’s 2025 survey, the account is the largest account on Truth Social. On Thursday morning his account reached 12.9 million followers. Trump regularly posts official communications first on Truth Social, making his account a must-see for Wall Street firms and news organizations tracking the presidency.
Trump media did not mention the president in its press release announcing the service, known as an API or application programming interface. But it indicated potential interest from Wall Street firms. “The market is already moving on Truth Social posts,” Trump Media interim CEO Kevin McGurn said in the release.
The White House did not respond to an email about the announcement, but referred CNBC’s message to the Trump Organization, which declined to comment.
Trump Media did not immediately respond to an email with follow-up questions.
“This is a huge conflict of interest,” said Virginia Cantor, ethics lawyer for the Democracy Defenders Fund, a nonprofit that has been critical of the Trump administration. “He has an obligation to the American people to publicly inform them, and now he is disseminating it through a private channel in which he has a personal interest as one of its largest shareholders.”
Truth Social “has essentially become the president’s press room,” Cantor said.
Trump Media is following the path taken by other social networks, which also offer APIs to paying subscribers. Hedge funds and other Wall Street firms use low-latency feeds to gain an edge on market-dynamic information posted on social networks. They can use access to post archives to create algorithms that respond to sentiment and emerging trends.
But none of those other social networks are the primary outlets for official posts by US President Trump, who regularly posts updates on his decisions about war with Iran and tariffs on Truth Social, among other issues.
Truth Social was launched in 2021 in response to X and Facebook’s decision to ban Trump’s account in the wake of the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021. He has since been reinstated in both.
Trump Media went public through a blank-check merger and is trading on the Nasdaq exchange under the ticker DJT beginning March 26, 2024. Its shares have fallen 84% since then as of Thursday morning, according to FactSet data.
About 114 million shares, now 42% of Trump Media, were issued to Trump, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings. Upon winning the presidency, he transferred those shares to a revocable trust in the name of his son Donald Trump Jr.