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Twitter Was a Mess. X Is a Disaster.
The dark side of Twitter (X)
Is anybody still using X besides Elon Musk?
It has now been more than two years since Elon Musk completed his complicated acquisition of the social media company Twitter in October of 2022. In July of 2023, he took the further step of renaming the platform simply “X.”
Since then, there has been a lot of turmoil at the site, as well as multiple headlines about users leaving X in a “mass exodus.”
Unfortunately, because the company is no longer Twitter, a publicly traded company with legal requirements to share information about its revenues and user numbers, but X, a privately owned company that doesn’t have to tell anyone anything, it is hard to guess just how many people are still using it, or how influential it still is.
But that has not stopped people from speculating about the “toxic mess” that they feel the platform has become.
What has changed since Twitter became X?
In our modern world, technological changes arrive at such a brisk pace that it’s sometimes hard to notice or remember how apps change. Twitter before Musk’s takeover in 2022 may not have been perfect, but many found it a useful platform for following up-to-the minute news, as well as for sparking conversations with others.
Back in 2022, some of the most frequent complaints about Twitter were that many of its users used it as a platform to belittle others, it was rife with disinformation and overrun by bots, and that the company never had a cohesive content moderation policy.
Once Musk took over, changes came at a lightning pace, but critics charge that many of the changes have not made X better.
Users have cited many problems with the “new” X platform. Among them are:
- Multiple problems with linking to and embedding tweets;
- Blue checks for “notable figures” are now not so much verified as they are purchased;
- High-profile users have claimed their followers are down and they have much less “reach” than in the past;
- Changes to the platform’s terms of service in November of 2024 meant that X could…
