You’re telling me the company that once had ads for T-Mobile and Volkswagen and now almost exclusively has ads where random bots with NFT photos advertise ChatGPT ‘services’ isn’t doing well financially??
It’s important to note that “doing well financially” isn’t just revenue and user count, it’s also expenditures. If Twitter has managed to cut costs by more than whatever its income has dropped by then that could well be a good outcome for it, I’ve heard it wasn’t profitable when Musk took it over.
It’s kind of ironic how big companies are frequently criticized for fixating on “endless growth” and “line goes up”, and then when a company or organization sheds that it also looks bad.
There’s so much wrong with your understanding here…so I’ll just point out that you’re talking about Twitter as if it’s still a public company, it’s not.
Also, Twitter was never profitable, and it was likely never going to be profitable. But there’s a big difference between their losses and projections before Musk, and after.
But there’s a big difference between their losses and projections before Musk, and after.
Which are?
If “lines goes up” meant things get better for the customers, the employees, and the world in general, then people would be cheering it on. Usually it means it gets worse for at LEAST one of the three, and sometimes all 3.
Here, “line goes down” is following Twitter getting worse for the customers, the users, the employees, and the world in general. So people will cheer as it crashes.
I thought Twitter’s infrastructure was going to collapse within weeks after Musk made all those cuts and changes. I was obviously wrong because Twitter’s infrastructure didn’t collapse. I’m not speaking to the user experience on Twitter but from a purely infrastructure perspective, Musk was right and I was wrong.
Uh-oh, you said something positive about Musk. I only said “maybe he’s not as bad as it seems” and look where that got me.
Lol exactly, how dare you have a nuanced opinion!
The 2022 and 2023 usage data was gathered through a national telephone survey of about 1,500 people aged 12 and older—further details and methodology for the 2024 usage data will be released on March 28, according to Edison.
What an interesting choice for collection method when you’re assessing a social media website in 2024.
What the fuck is the other 70%'s problem?
They’re bots
Or right-wing fascists
Or both
And definitely porn addicts
yeah. no that’s whistleblowers. you ever notice how every major whistleblower gets hit with a child porn charge? It’s like a label that reads “the government doesn’t think you should talk about this guy”. Nothing more than character assassination by our government. Ridiculous to suggest that someone used to being that furtive about something so shameful would also just want the world to know the truth.
those two things don’t fit together, and yet it keeps happening. weird
Or people with morbid curiousity like me who hop on to see the dumpster fire occasionally. Can’t say I recommend it.
He kept the 70% he wanted, it’ll be a propaganda engine and communications platform for the right wing.
Whatever wing willing to pay, honestly.
EDIT: I rarely see the voting system of lemmy for a reason. I find it cute, this reaction to the mere comparison between so-called “wings” in the American political system. Both, republicans and democrats, are two sides of the same coin.
I have a lot of friends that won’t quit because of sports updates and all the shitposts
There are a lot of quasi-celebrity types with a big following that don’t want to give up their follower base.
deleted by creator
i heard there’s good porn on there, probably why some decided to stick around
Quite a few Tumblr refugees still I’d imagine. Shame mastodon and Lemmy weren’t ready yet back then.
Also twitter is still one of the biggest platforms for sharing art in general, if you want the large audience, you kinda have to be there.
will never be zero accounts
at the end it will just be bots crossposting bots and replying to bots.
How much did human usage drop? Because there are a shitload more bots on twitter nowadays than there were in the years before he took over.
This should be human usage - the user survey was done by phone.
Ah, ok, 27% -> 19%, an 8% YoY drop, and the numbers were obtained using identical methodologies across multiple years. Yeah, I agree, seems to check out.
Still, there are definitely a shitload more bots than there were before.
Any time something gets too big it gets bots. Lemmy will be the same. We will see instances getting defederated who cannot manage the spam.
Fuck Elon though
Any time something gets too big it gets bots
Dead internet theory, summed up in a sentence
If people set up their own instances with 100% LLM bots how would we even know they are bots to defederate? The AIs are too realistic. Only giveaway would be the ones dumb enough to make accounts post/comment 24/7 with seconds between each comment.
I imagine the content would be bad, which is the whole reason an instance would become defederated.
Wasn’t like one of his focuses going to be getting rid of bots? Did they just not do anything and the bots just invaded or did the bots just get better?
He got rid of like 80% of the staff. I doubt he has a functional team who can even tackle the problem.
I suspect even more than 30%, and by a lot. Nearly all of the communities that once thrived seem to be dead. It feels very empty.
Oh you mean Twitter?
Yeah, ‘X’ is never gonna happen.
Needing to log in to view someones tweets means now I wont even visit the site when linked. Kinda the number 1 rule of platforms is to make them accessible to those that don’t already use it, so as to convert them later. Musk, and everyone around him letting these decisions run through, are idiots
ran into this last night.
I hate twitter, but there was something I was trying to see and the only way to get the info was from a twitter post. Couldnt view the goddamn twitter post without creating an account and logging in.
My immediate thought was “This isnt important enough for this bullshit” and immediately gave up.
I’m convinced this login to view shit is to hide the explosion of right wing white supremacy/racism/etc posts and the bots echoing and amplifying it from people before they commit themselves to an account.
Login to view started before Musk took over, FYI. I distinctly remember avoiding Twitter to spite them in those days.
Did it? I never had problem grabbing info off it before Musk.
good
Ever since Musk’s control of the company, Twitter (I refused to call it X) showed me multiple hate and racists posts. Basically, Twitter is showing me garbage. I now use Mastadon instead.
Mastodon has been great.
Are there enough using it?
I was never active in terms of posting but I followed several news outlets, local government agencies, and a few friends. Shortly after Musk took over I saw nothing but right wing nutjobs and a lot of posts from Musk. I tried unfollowing but nothing worked so I quit logging in. I need to cancel my account but haven’t taken the time.
Facebook does that for me too, alongside flat earthers, anti EV crap and the occasional funny picture. It’s depressing.
Well If you take in account how hard has “The Chief Xit” tried to destroy Twitter and piss off anyone using it, this is actually unexpectadly good result! More Powah to the Man Child 😂 . Also - there is no longer the
$1
payment for account creation - I guess bot traffic is better than no traffic 😂.I’m back to calling it Twitter. (Not that I’m ever on it though.)
Xitter, but the X makes a ‘sh’ sound.
It’s such a stupid name! Everytime it’s mentioned, it has to be prepend or suffixed with something so people actually understand the “X” context.
And more importantly - If you visit x.com, it redirects to twitter.com! So what’s the fucking point of the rebrand?
Xwitter (zwitter)
To the Mayan people X makes a ‘sh’ sound. That’s the way I pronounce it. Now and forever.
Xitter, I mean Shitter. I still pronounce the letter X normally.
What do people call a tweet in the X rebranding?
Xcrement
I wrote this right as the first elon buying Twitter mentions were popping up…
Notably, Twitter facilitated communication during the arab spring, where the people organized to stand against and even overthrow several broken and corrupt government regimes throughout the middle east - including some participation in places like Saudi Arabia, for example.
Twitter’s second largest investor after a musk takeover… the kingdom of Saudi Arabia and it’s de facto leader who, among other things, killed and dismembered an American journalist without consequence somewhat recently.
And now Twitter is about to be killed… and dismembered.
Yep, Saudi Arabia bought that service and the price, giving a man child a toy that it would probably ruin quickly, looked rather attractive.
Doesn’t surprise me. Musk has cultivated and emboldened racists, homophobes, cryptobros, misogynists, and the far right and the platform has turned into a cesspit. Meanwhile scammers & bots run rampant and the blueticks stink up every thread with cretinous remarks and trolling.
I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of people have just given up with it, or moved to another social media that isn’t so toxic.
I’m part of the 70%.
I use it exclusively for gay furry porn.
Disgusting.
I expected better from a gay furry porn aficionado
The fact that the platform is used by right wing extremists and for gay furry porn is kinda remarkable.
If you think right wing extremists can’t be into gay furry porn…
No, I thought they’d use another platform it.
How the fuck is that all?
I’m sure a lot of the original population has dropped by a lot more than that, but in numbers they would have been replaced by an influx of fascists and bots.
Bots on bots on bots.
This article is a survey of Americans, not a computerized search.
Unless a number of bots answered the telephone survey, I think the stats here are legit.