Truth Social announced last week that it was selling immediate access—or at least as close as possible—to President Donald Trump’s thoughts. For $100,000 a month, anyone will be able to receive almost instantaneous access to Trump’s Truth Social posts through the platform’s API, a very small but significant advantage over following them via the web. The offer is not, however, like many of his other commercial offerings attempting to capitalize on the presidency—this is no chintzy watch or repackaged phone painted gold. This is real business, and it’s uniquely structured to ensure that those willing to pay will have real, immediate access to the president’s statements.

There is already a booming business in selling near-immediate access to information—licensed data feeds are offered by other social media companies and media companies like Dow Jones and Bloomberg offer pricey wire services that allow extremely fast access to headlines and key data points. The market for all this is Wall Street firms who do high-speed trading—where access to key market-moving information even milliseconds faster than a competitor can allow profitable trades.

In fact, if anything, it was odd that Truth Social, which has struggled to make much of a profit or expand its active user base much beyond Trump and his immediate family, hadn’t already offered a........

© Mother Jones