People are disenchanted with the old Twitter (now X). “What are we still doing on this rotten social network?” writes singer Miren Iza (Tulsa) on the platform. She poses the question to those who still lurk in its corners trying to find something useful to put in their heads. “Well, the truth is that before I liked to inform myself, to know other points of view. Now I think the same as you,” responds a person named Lila Rico. “This account is relegated to a simple promotional tool,” also announced a few days ago the writer Alana Portero in a tweet that she posted at the top of her page. food. “I will not contribute any active content to this network whose owner has turned it into a far-right propaganda and hate machine.”
When you enter the browser and type “twitter” in the top bar, the web address of «https://twitter.com/home” Then, as if the app were trying to hide its true nature, it quickly, almost automatically, transforms into “It’s hard to make Twitter stop being Twitter. Now, the name of the “public square of the Internet” – as Elon Musk defined it before buying it two years ago – technically refers to any public place. To name a few: the loudspeaker of its sole owner, the vomit of viral videos, the handful of fake news, a scary machine for advertisers, a headache for academics who used it to share and learn from others, and an increasingly flawed tool that some have used until now to maintain work contacts or communities of interest with which they have difficulty finding themselves on other platforms.
There was a time in the past when Twitter was better. Auxi Barea was one of the first users of the social network in Spain, more than 15 years ago. “I always liked it a lot,” he says over the phone. “But the truth is that it is becoming a less friendly place. It is increasingly difficult to access the platform and enjoy it, it is no longer that place where you can talk, laugh and live another type of experience, discover other perspectives,” he explains. He has not yet lost hope: “I think that if you know how to make the algorithm work well, Twitter always has interesting profiles, because there are people who provide value in a differential way.” One of those who allows him to maintain this hope is @leyendoenmetro, a profile that publishes photos of people reading on the subway and the names of books. “But I don’t know what the future of the platform will be, because it is becoming less and less pleasant“.
The arrival of Elon Musk marked a turning point in the company’s history. After the acquisition, half of the staff was fired and problems began with the verification system, which ended up being paid. Content moderation is in decline and the algorithm seems to seek to maximize the number of visits, and nothing else. The result is palpable: “X has been affected by the stagnation of user growth,” said the Financial Time a month ago The number of daily active users in the second quarter of 2024 was 251 million, up 1.6% from the same period last year. The growth is minimal compared to the double digits that characterized the platform before Musk’s acquisition in 2022.
It’s becoming a less friendly place. It’s harder to access the platform and enjoy it, it’s not that place anymore where you can talk, laugh and have a different kind of experience, learn from other perspectives.
Auxi Barea
— X (formerly Twitter) user since its inception
Other platforms have tried to fill the gap. But it seems they can’t. Mark Zuckerberg has claimed that Threads will have 175 million monthly active users by 2023, but analytics firm Sensor Tower estimates that it’s actually around 38 million. Mastodon, another contender for the throne, is stuck at 1 million daily active users, according to Mastodon Analytics, after hitting 2.5 million shortly after Musk bought its rival. Zoe Williams, columnist Tutorrecounts his attempt to escape Twitter in a recent piece. “I joined Mastodon, but quickly realized I would never get the 70,000 followers I had on Twitter. Not that I wanted attention per se, but there is something disturbing and a little depressing about a food social networks that are not updated frequently enough,” he lamented.
Brazil has just experienced a massive migration to another platform. On Saturday, August 31, Twitter was no longer available on phones. This was the response of a Brazilian judge to the company’s “repeated failure to comply with court orders.” The platform’s 22 million users found themselves, for a few moments, without a place to express their anger and learn the reality. Then they moved en masse to Bluesky. Four days after the ban, the social network had added 2 million users, according to TechCrunch. Elon Musk accused the magistrate of being “a dictator” and of issuing “illegal orders to censor his political opponents.” Once again, the owner has become the center of controversy and has still not managed to return Twitter to Brazilians.
Margot Rot, writer and philosopher accustomed to reflecting on virtuality (she recently published the essay Infoxication with Paidós), does not share this very defeatist discourse. “I think it’s a passing fatigue,” he defends. “I don’t think people hate Twitter. Maybe you’re a little excited by what you read, but hey, we also need something to express your own thoughts on.” Although it’s also true that the application is going through a strange moment. “I get unbelievable tweets, the result of an algorithm that doesn’t seem to work, and it makes me want to leave.” But between this momentary frustration and the change of platform, there is a step. For her, the application remains important: “If you leave Twitter, it’s like leaving a part of the present.”
I think it’s a passing fatigue. I don’t think people hate Twitter. You might be a little excited by what you read, but hey, we also need something to bounce your own thoughts off of.
Margot Rot
— author of “Infoxication” (Paidós)
Many feel trapped in this situation. Twitter is where you can update your particular worldview, but you increasingly have to pay a higher price. Even academics are complaining. “If university X disappears, where will the research organizations go?” asks Andy Tattersall, a professor at the London School of Economics, in a paper published earlier this month. “For the research community, a Columbia Business School analysis suggests that Twitter users have changed since Musk’s arrival: “They are less interested in unbiased facts. Fact-checkers and unbiased media accounts receive 52% and 27% fewer interactions, respectively. And less reliable sources get more attention.”
Fernando López-Pita is the founder of Subtrato, a community of independent authors. He entered social networks more out of necessity than pleasure. “I have no choice but to be there. Twitter is the primary source of dissemination of everything that happens in many areas,” he analyzes, “and you have to be there if you want to have this information first-hand.” He is aware of the price he pays: the tab where the algorithm provides him with content is full of “accidents, violence, fake news and even pornographic content.” And he ends recounting his experience with a categorical phrase, which sums up the current moment on the social network: “Every time, you have to dig deeper into the shit to find a diamond.”
