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.
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.
I use Twitter through a browser and ad blocker and the content is borderline dogshit as it is. I use it because inertia means the things I want to find are still represented there. But it can’t be long before some major accounts move elsewhere, or deprioritize their presence. I’m thinking mainly of news orgs, but NGOs and governments might move too.
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Of course engagement is down, nobody wants to post anymore when most replies are spambot nonsense and cheech and chong gummies ads. It is still the best place for breaking sports news and my feed is highly curated to only see what I want.
Don’t forget the endless “Pussy in Bio” advertisements that are now filling up most feeds.
Weird, whenever I browse twitter I see loads of people of all kinds tweeting things.
Whenever I browse Twitter I do it because others link to it
spoiler
, and a lot of porn originates from there
. I’m glad that people are moving away, because that means these not as many people will use it as a primary source, and post art and other stuff somewhere else.
Right? I browse Twitter a lot and whenever I do I just kidding no I don’t.
Because the algorithm will always try to fill the timeline with something. It’s not going to show you empty spaces where tweets WOULD have been if people who left had been there.
I don’t see any empty spaces.
Yes. Because the algorithm fills them with tweets from other people. That’s why it seems like there are still the same number of people there even though there aren’t.
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What do you mean Albuquerque has fewer people than NYC? One time I was at this cafe in Albuquerque and it was packed!
“Nobody goes there anymore, it’s too crowded” - Yogi Berra
People on mastodon and lemmy keep saying twitter is dead, but it’s actually very active.
One of the idiots that replied to that comment of mine literally said they don’t go there anymore but looked at me like I’m some kind of idiot for just saying that people are still tweeting. Out of the two of us, I’m the one who still goes there, they don’t go there anymore.
So who do you think would know better about what’s going on on twitter as of late?
As for me, it should be dead. I’m tired of having people link Twitter, as if any good person will join a discussion on there. It’s a digital parasite feeding off ad revenue and it should be taken down so people stop linking to it and posting on there.
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Twitter is even more cringe than LinkedIn, which is saying something.
Remember when Twitter was being used by people in warzones and struggling under authoritarian regimes to avoid being killed for thinking “illegally”?
I miss the days when this platform served any purpose at all.
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.
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.
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.
Or using a laugh react as a thumbs down.
A laugh react is more insidious than a thumbs down.
Underrated observation.
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…
what a save!
what a save! what a save!What’s “ratioing”
When a reply to a tweet gets more engagement than the tweet itself.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Can we get musk to buy russia?
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.
twitter was overly woke before musk and after musk it edging close to being alt right.
gone were the days where people don’t get offended by the smallest of things and woke idiots using their nonsense to spread hatred and discrimination.
Can you define woke?
my bad,it should have been woke extremism.
woke used to mean being alert to racial discrimination and/or prejudice used by black people.
nowadays perverted by sjw to be used as a weapon to discriminate and spread hatred.
So you mean racism.
basically bigotry, discrimination,racism not that much different used by right wing nutjobs.
Do you have an example?
reddit would be awashed with plenty but you probably can’t find much since the woke mods are banning and deleting posts and calling it whatever phobia they find convenient.
So no examples to back up your claim. Ok.
Woke is just a dogwhistle for bigots now. Instead of “I hate that there are gay people in my movie” it’s now “Going woke ruined this movie”.
I know, I was just curious how many steps it would take before they were honest about their own bigotry.
Of course they don’t have the balls to be, so instead stay vague and deflect.
I thought as much; I was just hijacking the conversation to put that in black & white for passers by =)
Haha all good :D
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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.
American here. Never used twitter. Never pay attention to it.
It was pretty widely used in France
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.
Even of nobody uses twitter , he got the money to keep it running for next 100 years.
Not really. His wealth isn’t in money, it’s in shares of companies like Tesla. If Tesla drops in value his wealth drops. If he sells shares in Tesla to subsidize Twitter, the value of his remaining shares in Tesla drops. Which is why he borrowed a lot of money from the Saudis to acquire Twitter. Using Tesla shares as collateral. Tesla stock is crazy overvalued, and he’s leveraged it to shit. It’s possible Elon Musk could be bankrupt in a couple of years.
I see a lot of “if”
Normally it would be “he won’t do that because it would be completely stupid.” But since we’re talking about Elon Musk, it’s gotta be “If he does this stupid thing here’s what could happen.”
Tesla is down 31.23% YTd
