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.
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!Or using a laugh react as a thumbs down.
A laugh react is more insidious than a thumbs down.
My point was that a laugh react is meant to be a positive interaction (what you said was funny, and I enjoyed your contribution) but has been co-opted as a negative reaction (I’m laughing at what a willfully ignorant idiot you are) because FB only wanted to provide users with positive ways to react. My concern wasn’t the level of negativity, only to provide the person to whom I was replying with a other example.
I think that was clear, my further comment was to highlight how far off (maybe), FB’s implementation intent has been from the way people are now using it.
Yes, in a joke or funny post the laugh emoji is used as intended. But in a more serious announcement it is the equivalent of mocking disgust, hence more emotionally devastating than a thumbs down.
Eg say someone posts a somber poem about their late father - a laughing emoji is saying “fuck you, I laugh at your pain or your shitty poem or the memory of your dad”.
The only question is, why, now that they’ve seen how it’s used don’t they let people disallow certain reactions. I’m assuming because emotional distress is more addictive…
Underrated observation.
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.
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.
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. 🧐
“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.
Eh I’ve been reading this headline forever.
Call me when it’s Myspace.
Myspace existed for a really long time after it ceased to be relevant. It actually only ceased to be relevant after they lost all the music that had been uploaded. That’s when independent musicians finally abandoned it, and it basically disappeared.
Reporting on “X” is what’s keeping it alive, IMHO. Stop reporting on it and it will stop being used. Alternatively, if there’s some major incident, that would probably be enough to finish it. It may eventually go bankrupt between now and then, but it’s actually pretty useful for people wanting to spread nazi propaganda so the far right will probably keep pumping money in until it collapses.
Reporting on “X” is what’s keeping it alive, IMHO.
Nah. “X” had $Billions in cash from the buyout deal + loans. X will simply not fall until all that cash dries up, and they reach the end of their loans. Even then, Elon Musk can just command Tesla to buy a whole bunch of Twitter-advertisements to transfer money to Twitter/X and keep the party alive a bit longer.
I don’t know how long it will last. But Elon Musk was over $200 Billion in assets when he bought the company. He’s lost a ton of that money, but Elon Musk still has a long way to go before he runs out of options. It does seem like Musk’s wealth is collapsing before our eyes however (their big bet on China / Gigafactory Shanghai looks like its about to go bad this quarter), but I don’t expect X to fall until after Elon Musk runs out of money.
There’s a lot of money that needs to be deflated / lost before this whole thing collapses. But like gravity, it should be inevitable. No one can lie, steal, and cheat money forever and get away with it IMO, eventually people catch on. But it can last for more decades than people expect.
