IS X OFFICIALLY A FAILURE?

Just over two years after tech mogul Elon Musk acquired and rebranded the social media giant Twitter for a cool $44 billion, we’re checking the pulse on Elon’s vision of an ‘everything app’ to decide if this social channel is living up to expectations, or if this multi-billion dollar buyout is dead-on-arrival.

50% Loss

As of the start of 2024, reports of X’s value circulated across the media for its alarming drop in value. This was reported by The Guardian showing a cataclysmic drop in value of more than 70%.

This is – at least in part – due to the company’s owner, Musk himself. Following an alarming increase in hate speech on the channel, enormous businesses such as Walmart, IBM and the European Commission pulled ads from the site following a headline grabbing scenario in which Musk seemingly endorsed an antisemitic post on the platform.

When pressed for comment by the New York Times about the repercussions of losing such massive advertisers such as NBU Universal, the tech businessman gave an unbothered and expletive laden response… Something which must have had Musk’s marketers recoiling in horror.

All Quiet on the Western Front

Musk’s X platform has also been receiving fewer visitors than in previous years, with a 5% drop predicted for the conclusion of 2024. Whilst this drop translates into almost 40 million users, this still places X in the top 15 most used platforms on the market. 

Earlier in the year Forbes reported a 30% drop in usage. Whilst not quite the same as active users, this cited study does suggest that since Twitter became X the channel has seen considerably less viewership. Moreover, there is strong evidence which suggests that whilst the number of users on X numbers in the hundreds of millions, just 10% of these users are responsible for almost 90% of the channel’s content.

Unmoderated and Unsupported

Under the guise of ‘freedom of speech’ or ‘freedom of expression’ X has rolled back some major changes to its content moderation, making the channel not only less user friendly – particularly for young adults and minors – but arguably less safe, following a substantial (and widely reported) staff layoff following Musk’s successful acquisition, which saw as much as 80% of the engineers dedicated to trust and safety slashed from the business. 

Instead, X now relies heavily on its Community Notes feature, which allows approved (see also, ‘paid for’) users to add a note to posts for additional context. The idea behind this self moderation is that users would be able to highlight problematic, explicit or illegal content to help X’s meagre moderation team manage its channel. However, this relies heavily on its users’ proactivity and not being apathetic to the platform’s red-flag content. As Fortune reported in February of this year, it took nearly 17 hours for X’s moderation efforts to curb explicit AI generated content featuring the likeness of a world famous musician. That, alongside unmoderated go-pro footage from battlefields, animal abuse and as the Centre for Countering Digital Hate called ‘extreme hate speech’ on the platform, it is little wonder that X has alienated its audience so radically that most have moved their online activities elsewhere.

The Owner

There is a phrase which seems to illustrate the current relationship between X’s owner and the platform itself. ‘Don’t try your own supply’. With Elon Musk so prevalent on his own platform, brands and businesses must legitimately weigh the risks of advertising on a platform on which the owner of that platform frequently posts biassed, politicised and polarising content with alarming regularity. According to The Guardian, following Musk’s interview with Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump, the tech tycoon posted on his own platform 145 times in just 24 hours and this frenzied output has major corporations concerned, and understandably so.

If a business is launching a major marketing campaign which may make make or break them, the likelihood as to whether your ads being shown alongside the conspiracy filled political ramblings of the platform’s owner is worthy of serious discussion.

Pay to Play

Amongst the largest of changes to the platform, the addition of paid features to the platform had many turning to alternative channels such as Threads, Meta, TikTok and others. This was most perplexing to audiences as many of the standard free features on Twitter would now be payable extras on X. 

Features such as post editing and text formatting are both held behind a paywall, with other features such as creator subscriptions, reduced ads and ID verification safely secured behind the second of a three tier paid subscription model. A huge feature which comes with the basic subscription is the ability to extend your posts beyond the original USP of Twitter, the 280 character limit for your posts, by raising that figure up to 25,000 characters.

The pay to play aspect of X is loaded against the user in such a way that by not paying your experience is arguably worse than that of paying customers.

Wrap Up

Despite the significant changes to the platform, X is still treading water, if only just. However,  thanks to its bond-villain-esk owner, share prices have plummeted, viewership has fallen steeply, moderation is lacking and big businesses are electing to spend their lofty marketing budgets elsewhere on less risky prospects. If we want to know if X can truly be called a failure, we’ll leave you with this fruit for thought. Do you call Elon Musk’s platform X? Or do you still call it Twitter? 

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