New data show that only a small minority of users go to conservative social media alternative networks for their news, a statistic that shows the scale of the challenge facing the fledgling industry.
Only 6% of U.S. adults get their news from conservative social networks like Gab, Gettr, Truth Social, Parler, Rumble, or Telegram, according to a report Thursday from the Pew Research Center. It’s a noticeably lower number of users than Facebook and Twitter. However, many users said they found community and camaraderie on these websites.
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“Although fewer than one-in-ten Americans say they use any of these sites for news, most who do say they have found a community of like-minded people there,” Pew wrote. The vast majority of users on the platforms surveyed identified as Republican.
Pew researchers said the websites capitalize on partisanship, offering “a refuge for some who feel they do not have a home on the more established sites” like Facebook or Twitter.
Parler was the most well known of the platforms, with 38% of respondents claiming to know of it. Truth Social and Telegram were next at 27% each, followed by Rumble at 20% and Gettr at 10%.
While some critics speculate that the platforms struggle to attract users due to a lack of conflict and cross-ideological debate, 65% of users claim that they found a community on these websites.
However, it is a small part of the population compared to other platforms. Digital news is the most common source of news in 2022. The social media platforms that the greatest share of people say they use to keep track of news are Facebook (31%), YouTube (25%), and Twitter (14%).
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Many of the platforms surveyed by Pew have struggled to maintain growth year over year, according to data from Comscore. However, many of these apps have struggled to find a user base due to app stores like Apple and Android restricting Parler and Truth Social from being downloaded.
Others have been critical of the platforms for their insular communities. Elon Musk said in a Friday interview that Trump’s Truth Social is a “right-wing echo chamber.”
