One year ago, Elon Musk, the billionaire entrepreneur, made headlines when he entered Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters with a white bathroom sink and a determined smile. He swiftly ousted the CEO and other top executives, marking the beginning of a transformation of the social media platform that would eventually become known as X.
X may resemble Twitter on the surface, but the more time you spend on it, the more apparent it becomes that it’s an altered version. Musk dismantled core features that defined Twitter, including its name and iconic blue bird logo, its verification system, and its Trust and Safety advisory group. Content moderation and hate speech enforcement have also been significantly impacted.
Furthermore, a substantial portion of the workforce, including the engineers who maintain the site, the moderators who ensure it remains free of hate speech, and the executives responsible for establishing and enforcing rules, have been terminated, laid off, or departed.
The consequences of these changes, as observed by long-time Twitter users, have been the decline of the platform’s role as an imperfect yet valuable source of current events and information. The future of X remains uncertain, as does Musk’s aspiration to turn it into an “everything app” universally embraced by everyone.
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Jasmine Enberg, an analyst from Insider Intelligence, remarked, “Musk has failed to make any significant improvements to the platform and is no closer to realizing his vision of an ‘everything app’ than he was a year ago. Instead, X has lost users, advertisers, and its primary value proposition in the world of social media: being a central hub for news.”
Although Musk was one of the platform’s most prominent and active users even before acquiring the company, his experience on Twitter was vastly different from that of regular users. Many of the changes he introduced to X were driven by his personal views of the site, even going so far as to seek advice from his millions of followers (who, in some cases, recommended he step down).
Enberg pointed out, “Musk’s treatment of the platform as a technology company that he could remake according to his vision, rather than as a social network driven by people and ad revenue, has been the main factor behind Twitter’s decline.”
The blue checkmarks, once a symbol of verified accounts, now merely indicate that someone is paying $8 a month for a subscription service that boosts their posts above unverified users. Unfortunately, these paying accounts have been found to spread misinformation on the platform, often amplified by its algorithms.
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For instance, a recent report from the nonprofit organization Media Matters identified numerous blue-checked X accounts with substantial followings spreading false claims, including conspiracy theories related to events like mass shootings and the Israel-Hamas conflict. The European Commission even issued a formal request to X regarding its handling of hate speech, misinformation, and violent terrorist content associated with the war.
Prominent foreign policy expert Ian Bremmer stated that the level of disinformation on the Israel-Hamas war being promoted algorithmically on the platform is unlike anything he’s encountered in his career.
Not only is the platform’s identity in flux, but its financial situation is also uncertain. Musk acquired Twitter for $44 billion in a deal that concluded on October 27, 2022, when the company was already struggling financially. Musk took it private, so its financial details are no longer public, but he acknowledged a significant drop in advertising revenue and substantial debt.
In an attempt to attract top brands, Musk hired Linda Yaccarino, a former NBC executive with strong ties to the advertising industry, but progress has been slow. While some advertisers have returned to X, their spending has not matched previous levels, despite the online advertising market’s resurgence, benefiting companies like Meta and Alphabet.
According to Insider Intelligence, X is expected to generate $1.89 billion in advertising revenue this year, a 54% decline from 2022 when it reached $4.12 billion. Global web traffic to Twitter.com has also decreased, with a 14% year-over-year drop, and the ads.twitter.com portal for advertisers saw a 16.5% decrease in traffic. Mobile performance was similarly affected, down 17.8% year-over-year based on combined monthly active users for Apple’s iOS and Android.
Enberg summed up the situation, stating, “Even though the cultural relevance of Twitter was already starting to decline, it’s as if the platform no longer exists. And it’s been a death by a thousand cuts, with most of the wounds being self-inflicted. Typically, when a social platform loses relevance, external factors play a role, but that’s not the case here.”
The future of X under Elon Musk’s leadership continues to be a subject of uncertainty.
