Data from two research firms and figures published by Musk and X suggest a deteriorating situation for X by some metrics. Musk has marketed it as the world’s “town square,” but in number of users it continues to lag far behind social media rivals that focus on video, such as Instagram and TikTok.
In February, X had 27 million daily active users of its mobile app in the U.S., down 18% from a year earlier, according to Sensor Tower, a market intelligence firm based in San Francisco. The U.S. user base has been flat or down every month since November 2022, the first full month of Musk’s owning the app, and in total it’s down 23% since then, Sensor Tower said.
Musk has marketed it as the world’s “town square"
He says it so clearly here which makes me wonder how people don’t realize it:
How fucked up would it be if your actual town square was owned by a private company?
A private company that is in control of who is allowed to talk and what they are allowed to say. A private company that even decides what you hear and see while walking the square. Meanwhile also shovelling ads in front of you while you try to find the people you actually want to engage with.
“Social” media owned by private corporations is not social. Such media is anti-social, corporate control of public spaces that ought to belong to the people, just like they mostly do in real life.
Ah in this town square metaphor, don’t forget the private company’s CEO has a megaphone and talks over people, and outright kicks them out of the square if you hurt his feelings.
Maybe his idea of a town square is more like a place for Nuremberg rally events.
All the while being fellated by feline feces, white nationalists, and dox-happy anti-LGBT bigots who celebrate the suicides of oppressed minorities.
Totally on your page, but what you’re describing sounds kinda like times square.
I’ve never been there so don’t know really. But it does seem full of ads and not very social either.
How fucked up would it be if your actual town square was owned by a private company?
You have just invented malls. Hugely damaging to society, but they come with convenient parking and air con.
I quite like the tag line X, the abandoned shopping mall of the internet.
I think it describes it well.
And to top it all off, it’s run by this guy in particular.
Considering the teams tasked with containing political opinion manipulation campaigns were the first to go, I think that is exactly what the acquisition boils down to. A license to manipulate and meddle in public discussion for anyone rich or powerful enough (and of a political disposition agreeable to Musk’s increasingly GOP/Russia-indoctrinated mind).
It’s a “public town square” where the major approvingly smiles as groups of paid shills and remote-controlled opinion pushers insert themselves into discussions and roughen up people they notice going against the opinions they push.
I maintain the Saudis gave Elon the loan, even if he never pays back a dime, to keep another Arab spring from ever happening again.
Whenever I get linked to twitter, it tries to get me to login when I just want to scan the thread… I back out everytime now.
Same. It loads the page where the tweet would be, then it seems like 2 popups cover it up, both about logging in. I immediately no longer care about viewing what I wanted to see, and close the window.
Honestly I feel like that killed Twitter more than many other changes.
People tell me "there’s no way he (musk) would intentionally crash his own company - it makes no sense - “he’s just terribly bad at business!”
But is he really THAT bad? In what world could these changes be made in which he’s actively trying to improve the company? If nothing else, seeing the negative backlash, bad publicity and dropping number of users wouldn’t any sound minded business owner at least temporarily undo some of these changes?
With any business, if you make a change that causes you to lose customers and get bad publicity… don’t you try to mitigate the damage done? Who goes balls to the wall on obviously bad decisions?
He’s that bad at business. On Twitter, Musk has no workers to contain his bullshit or create a good public image for him. Nor does he have enough workers to keep Twitter running smoothly as it used to.
My point is, look I’m a dumb white hick. I’ve never ran anything as significant as this. Just from the way the guy talks I can tell he has eons more experience than I do. His track record? Jesus Christ.
Still, if I were him I would’ve just… stopped. Long, long ago.
Yet he hasn’t. Admittedly, I’m a dumb fuck yet smart cookie compared to some but honestly what are the odds that with zero experience I could make better business decisions than this guy?
Make it make sense, ya know? Explain to me like I’m 5 why he would make decisions that are so obviously detrimental to the company? What are the odds that I could give better business advice than this guy?
Yet this is what he’s doing. He’s either purposely destroying it or has some weird master plan and I’m not sure I can be convinced otherwise tbh. We all see it, as bad as he seems to be there’s no way he doesn’t.
He’s the best example of someone falling upwards. He’s not much more than a cash cow for other people running the companies that he owns and their successes are not happening because of Musk, they are happening despite of him. It goes as far as SpaceX allegedly using “handlers” to keep him from interfering with the actual development. I’m pretty sure that you, as a mod of [email protected], have more technical experience as the guy who claims to be the genius behind Tesla.
The reason that Musk is making these obviously dumb decisions at Twitter is because it’s 100% his toy to play with and there’s nobody else running the show for him. What we are seeing is essentially the unfiltered effect that he has on a business.
Elon sounds like he’s experienced, skilled and is approaching things from a theoretical or ethical or other grand point of view. He used to impress me with his approach on building an electric car company with full self-driving vehicles in the 2010’s. I wasn’t a full believer, but I thought he was competent and wanted Tesla to succeed.
Then he went and bought Twitter. As a software engineer all my life, and in the startup scene, and having worked in a failed social media platform, I have some experience. Everything he’s said about Twitter is crap and everything he’s done is stupid. And the results speak for themselves.
I’ve seen people say that Elon sounds great about things they don’t know too much about. But when the topic comes to things they do understand, Elon clearly is wrong.
He started his career with hundreds of millions of dollars, and he bet it all on a couple of businesses be bought (he was never a founder, always a purchaser).
Basically he’s been lucky twice (Paypal and Tesla), but each of these won 10-100x on his initial stake.
Basically he’s been lucky twice (Paypal and Tesla), but each of these won 10-100x on his initial stake.
From what I’ve heard about his time at Paypal he really lucked out by basically being pushed out of the company with a golden parachute to ride out on.
He used to impress me with his approach on building an electric car company with full self-driving vehicles in the 2010’s. I wasn’t a full believer, but I thought he was competent and wanted Tesla to succeed.
Elon Musk didn’t build the company.
Elon Musk invested into the company, and then sued Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning into giving him “Founder” status. When Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning left the company, it all started to go to shit. Sure there’s some momentum, but by 2015+, its clear that Elon Musk’s buffoonery has taken over (ex: using Tesla money to buy his cousin’s company SolarCity) and today we have 100% Elon bullshit like Cybertruck.
Elon Musk didn’t build the company.
Elon Musk invested into the company,
That’s what I said a couple of paragraphs later
If he was smart, he would have known his own limitations and kept the facade. People thought he was the real life Tony Stark.
Instead, he believed all the bullshit. The actual smart people around him were replaced with sycophants. I have yet to meet one engineer that thinks highly of Elon. They might like working at SpaceX, but Elon has shown himself to be so pathetically stupid fake side projects have to be made for him to participate in so he doesn’t derail the actual work.
Elon has also caused so many failures at Tesla. He has sunk resources into garbage that have yet to be manifest with today’s computers rather than make a good EV. His companies succeed in spite of him. He is nothing more than a slightly below average rich kid who failed upwards.
Elon has also caused so many failures at Tesla. He has sunk resources into garbage that have yet to be manifest with today’s computers rather than make a good EV.
His explanation for removing LIDAR from self-driving cars because “people can drive with their eyes, so a camera should be good enough” is another one of those things that sounds right until you think about it for more than a half a fucking second.
It’s not a meritocracy. That’s basically all there is to it. He’s in his position by a combination of birth, dumb luck, and people thinking he sounds smart because he’s got a weird accent.
The idea that the rich’s ranks were ever or ever would be mostly full of smart or hard working people that “earned it” or “deserve it” is just a giant bunch of rich people propaganda that the masses devoured…bigly.
You can view threads without logging in? I haven’t been able see replies/parent posts in months.
Except with Nitter, but that had to shut down too.
No, that’s the issue. I can see the post but not the thread so I bail.
Many times I can’t even see the post.
I used to be really active on Twitter. Everyone was there: my friends, people in my industry, people involved in my hobbies. When Musk bought it out everyone left. I tried to follow them to Bluesky and Mastodon but they mostly just quit posting. Between that and Reddit falling apart I don’t often use social media anymore.
Yeah. Same. I moved to Mastodon, and then ended up getting my invite to Bluesky (two weeks before it opened to everyone…thanks Jack Dorsey…real helpful…). But no one is there. Mastodon has mostly tech and open source. Bluesky is…well…nothing that I can tell.
Unquestionably the winner of Twitter’s fall was TikTok, when suddenly everyone including politicians started making accounts/posts. Which is likely a large part of the push to get it banned in the US. Because it’s taking away users/advertisers from good ol’ 'murican tech businesses owned by south african diamond mine nepo babies.
Jack Dorsey isn’t really involved in Bsky anymore
Mastodon has mostly tech and open source. Bluesky is…well…nothing that I can tell.
depends on your instance and social circle, i maintain a total lack of that in mine
Good. Come to mastodon.
Edit: wtf is bluesky?
Bluesky
Mastodon
Duck season.
Wabbit season!
Duck season!
Wabbit season!
Duck season!
Less filling.
No.
Why?
I don’t think mastodon will be around in a decade, while I can easily imagine bluesky being around in 20.
Bluesky will be around as long as there’s a company behind it. If it’s not profitable, it’ll cease to exist overnight. Activitypub will be around as long as people enjoy it, which is a lot more sustainable.
Mastodon is just one platform used to access the Fediverse. I agree, Mastodon might not be the hottest Fediverse microblogging app in a decade, but the Fediverse will certainly still be around. And that’s what you should really care about.
Don’t go to Mastodon specifically, just go to the Fediverse.
Misskey or one of it’s many forks is good too
You mean boneless fediverse?
I’m actually glad to see what’s been happening to Twitter because as much as it was started with good intentions and used to be a positive force for tech, it was also fundamentally flawed social media model. The basic problem was that only positive reactions were allowed - like, retweet, follow. This is NOT the town square, where you can get any reaction. It’s more akin to a dictator’s rally, where you’re only allowed to clap and booing is not allowed. So it’s no surprise that over time, it led to filter bubbles and the spread of mass delusions. Because you could say the craziest or most depraved thing, and all you’d hear is applause.
The basic problem was that only positive reactions were allowed - like, retweet, follow
Idk if I would call retweeting positive reaction, especially when that retweet is ‘look at this fucking moron’.
Yeah I think if anything twitter is a lesson in how even if you try to give users only positive ways to interact they will find ways to use them to interact negatively. Whether that be quote retweeting or ratioing.
what a save!
what a save! what a save!What’s “ratioing”
When a piece of content that doesn’t allow downvotes, like a tweet, has lots more reposts than it does likes, the “ratio” is seen as proof the opinion was disagreed with, proportionally to the “ratio” itself.
When a reply to a tweet gets more engagement than the tweet itself.
I’ve seen it used to describe when a post has more comments than it has likes.
Makes sense thanks
Yup. That’s actually a problem when people dog pile on someone with a valid point.
I would say that the “positive vibes only” trait is part of it, but the far bigger problem was the character limit. Even when it was double from 140 to 280, that still doesn’t not leave room for nuanced opinions. And then, the least nuanced opinions also become the most easily spreadable. Both traits really reward our worst instincts.
Downvoting and disliking can have their own issues too.
On Lemmy, downvoting isn’t really that bad, especially compared to Reddit, and that’s likely because of the federated model where instance admins can’t trust the authenticity of votes. On Lemmy, voting effects the score on the post and that’s it, as opposed to Reddit where taking on too many downvotes will shadow ban or lock your account, even if you still have thousands of karma in the subreddit where it happened. Those restrictions also apply site wide. Lemmy users also don’t have a global karma count, which removes most temptation to delete posts that go negative and self censor. Of course there are probably many people out there who would delete a post with a 10:1 negative score ratio. Then again if it’s that bad then it might not be a bad thing to delete it.
Both models have their place and pros and cons. I understand the nefarious intent behind this change on Youtube, but I feel like hiding negative feedback so that only the poster can see it has potential. It could deter bandwagon downvote brigading. Dislikes are really only relevant to the algorithm and the user who posted the content.
In Lemmy you can also disable the visualization of the voting system instance-side and client-side. I disable it, then, after writing my piece, it’s out there. If people don’t like it and they don’t reply, well, deal with it.
Well said, I think that is the best explanation I have ever heard on the sites flaws.
I’m not sure which platform (fb, Twitter, YouTube???) it was, but it did count “unfollow” or “block user/block channel/block post” as negative feedback, limiting future reach of this person’s posts to other users of the platform.
Yeah I’ve always thought of it as a “build your own cult” toolkit. On Twitter you too can try your hand at being a cult leader with followers that agree with everything you say.
X marks the Nazi
Weird. I’ve never seen Twitter more hostile to visitors and potential new users. And if you happen to register to a new account you will be welcomed by even more hostility from trolls and seasoned users. It’s just a terrible experience.
I noticed that as well. Every once in a while there will be a link to something interesting om Twitter, but you only get basically a screenshot. If you try and do any other viewing you immediately get pushed for sign in.
Actually yeah, why would if you are new to Twitter would you go through the effort of signing up and beating your head against the wall to try and find some community on Twitter when you could just avoid it?
You can’t just scroll around and check it out before you create your account. Your home page is probably artificially filled with the nonsense garbage of the owner making his own big statement and the ads you can see are for ball tanning, so you aren’t even sure you cAn trust the sponsors.
If you were young and not yet on it, why would you join unless you want to argue with assholes or try to get someone to lend you some crypto because you think it will get you out of your shit life.
Right? It feels more like they are trying to hide the toxicity of their community.
That’s what happens when you cater to Nazis
That you lose only 18% of your users?
I mean that’s millions of people, that’s not nothing
Tens of millions. I recall Twitter having around 400 million users before the buyout, so an 18% loss would be nearly 80 million.
And don’t forget that it might be offset by increased bot activity.
It’s probably about 40% of the non bot users.
Elon was right when he said history will remember who killed Twitter, but we disagree on who
People acting as if twitter is something important. And killing it is meaningful. In Europe we don’t use it. Literally. I’m Polish, I never had a twitter account and don’t know anybody who has. The whole twitter/musk debacle is a war over nothing.
Just because it’s not popular in your social bubble in Europe doesn’t mean it’s not important. I’m European, and I found it very useful during e.g. COVID or the start of the European invasion. (Ukraine*)
Of course there were problems with fake accounts back then, but it was still the best platform for curated expert feeds if you followed the right people.
It’s not the same anymore, many of the experts have left and especially the feeds don’t have the replies of other verified e.g. scientists. Similar to Reddit, but probably even worse/more noticeable.
It was pretty widely used in France
American here. Never used twitter. Never pay attention to it.
Right wing “free speech” spaces tend to crash and burn hard. If they don’t moderate blatant racism and shitty behavior, the white supremacists drive out all the sane people, but if they do moderate, then shit stains like Tim Pool will start casting massive amounts of FUD onto the platform and claim that it has “gone woke” and isn’t a true free speech platform.
It’s something you see endless repeated. When there is no rules, you get the loudest, baddest, pieces of work, rise to the top and then set rules that favour them. Look over the world and history, where law and order has broke down, war/drug lords take over.
I lived in Holland for a bit, my Dutch colleagues told a story of the bus system. Holland tried a honor payment system, trusting people to pay what they needed to for their trip. It failed hard and was replaced with fair collectors my colleagues called “the bus Nazis”.
The same thing happens with free speech absolutism. You hit “Paradox of tolerance”.
Anarchy just doesn’t work. You need rules for everyone to play nice by.
I mean look at how self checkouts are now looking at putting a hold of $100 on your card you use or Walmart requiring that you are a subscriber of their plan so they can hunt you down if you steal stuff.
It’s cheaper for sure to just let people do whatever they want, but people suck and mostly just care about themselves. And we really don’t care about the minor rules when those making them feel like they have all the power.
Humanity works when it’s the people all agreeing to shared set of rules and interacting with each other to keep it in check.
Yep, “Tragedy of the Commons”
Now that you mention Paradox, I think we need neural parasites to turn us into a well ordered hive mind like in that Paradox Interactive game known as Stellaris. 🧐
What I find most interesting, is not that twitter is failing in active users faster than the others, but that all the other listed in the article are also all seeing a decline in user ship. Even the new “up and comer” TikTok is losing users.
To some extent I suspect that it’s just a result of people breaking their social medias built during the pandemic. But is there something else? Are they just going to new platforms? Is there a modal shift on how people congregate online driven by the issues with platforms? Or are people just spending less time online with the pandemic mostly over.
Social media fatigue is slowly getting traction. I don’t have an article or study at hand to back it up, but I read about it the other day. Especially in younger generations it’s a trend already.
Also, but that’s only my personal theorie, i think it’s a trend only among the less-hateful people. Hateful people nonstop spewing their vile messages everywhere is making “normal” people leave, which then turns off even more “normal” people.
The enraged slowly turning (unmoderated) social media into one big echo chamber.
It’s really not fun to be on any of the platforms anymore, if it ever even was.
I don’t know if there will be a new thing, but if there is I think it can’t look like any existing platform as they’re all kind of trash and have largely the same problems.
I think there was also a naive technological optimism in the early 2000s and 2010s that has died off quite a bit. Tech companies came in looking like they were using some new type of capitalism that wasn’t all about the almighty dollar, but instead about progress more generally…now most of us know better.
There was a period in the mid 2000’s of like 3-4 years where social media was fun and not super toxic. It was still toxic to a degree, but nowhere near like it is now. Then it started to decline rapidly once the general public started to get involved as smart phones became better and better at helping keep people terminally online.
I hate sounding like a hipster, but everything good or at least semi-decent really does come to an end once it gets saturated by the general public.
Totally agree with all of this. Facebook was actually fun when I first used it. I wouldn’t call it anything even remotely resembling fun at this point.
Reddit was similar. Now every platform (including actually this one, sorry guys) I find myself dreading when there’s a response in my inbox because everything is just overwhelmingly bitter and full of disagreement online. I am guilty of it myself, too…but part of me thinks the format has to change drastically in order to become fun again.
“The platform struggles to attract and keep users”: why should I give up my data to an alt-right platform owned by a billionaire?
Can we get musk to buy russia?
Twitter is even more cringe than LinkedIn, which is saying something.
For Twitter I’m apparently also a turbo user, as I get loading errors every day, after opening a few tabs quickly. Then it takes a while before I’m unblocked. Before Elon bought Twitter this never happened.
