As much as I would love to be wrong, I don't think Truth Social, Gab or any other upstart would ever have been in a position to compete with Twitter.
I'm also skeptical as to the sincerity of Elon's commitment to free speech, but he has the right idea buying Twitter. Ultimately, the only way to break the left-wing stranglehold on social media is to take control of the normie platforms away from them. Any explicitly right-wing platforms set up as alternatives will always just be right-wing echo chambers, and have minimal overlap with mainstream or non-political discourse.
As much as I would love to be wrong, I don't think Truth Social, Gab or any other upstart would ever have been in a position to compete with Twitter.
I'm also skeptical as to the sincerity of Elon's commitment to free speech, but he has the right idea buying Twitter. Ultimately, the only way to break the left-wing stranglehold on social media is to take control of the normie platforms away from them. Any explicitly right-wing platforms set up as alternatives will always just be right-wing echo chambers, and have minimal overlap with mainstream or non-political discourse.