The Sustainable Media Substack

Let’s stop pretending this is just drama between two oversized egos. It’s not just about Trump calling Musk a lunatic or Musk firing back with Epstein-coded slime. This week’s meltdown between the former president and the world’s richest man is a symptom of something much bigger — and much more dangerous.

These aren’t just two men with platforms. They own them.

Let’s talk scale. X has about 650 million monthly active users worldwide — with around 60% under 35 — and it dominates news and cultural conversation in ways that no newspaper or network ever could. Truth Social is much smaller, hovering around 6 million monthly users, nearly all of them in the U.S., but what it lacks in reach, it makes up for in ideological purity. These aren’t just “apps.” They are fully functioning media ecosystems, operating without editors, without fact-checkers, without rules.

X and Truth Social don’t compete with traditional media — they drown it out. They out-shout Instagram, Reddit, or even YouTube in political influence, especially in election cycles. But they don’t just broadcast content. They algorithmically amplify it — injecting bias, bile, and personal agendas directly into the bloodstream of public discourse. No newsroom. No standards. No accountability. Just the unfiltered whims of two egomaniacs with vendettas and loyal followings.

This isn’t a fight between two guys online. It’s a battle for the infrastructure of truth itself.

Every headline covering their feud danced around the real story. Reporters gamed out how Trump might unleash government agencies to punish Musk. Pundits speculated Musk might push anti-Trump content down your feed. No one seemed shocked.

Few asked the real questions:

Why do two individuals have this kind of power over information in the first place? How did we allow truth itself to become a privately-owned asset?