7 ms·

60k people deactivated their X accounts on average each day in one week alone

28 points by doener 2y ago

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
capitol_ 2y ago
I wonder what the ratio of people actively deactivating to people silently never returning to the website/app is. At least 1 to 10 is my guess.
- dredmorbius 2y ago
  That should show up in MAU and time-on-site statistics. Which the site should be compelled to report to advertisers.
  - londons_explore 2y ago
    X does seem to report stats like this to the public. https://x.com/XData/ https://x.com/XData/ Obviously there is probably a decent amount of cherry picking of the stats to report.
    - dredmorbius 2y ago
      I'm genuinely curious as to what if any disclosures, and possible business requirements / fraud risks, are presented by not having such disclosures for an advertising-supported business. Virtually any significant publishing platform has a press kit detailing circulation or equivalent numbers, which are in most cases publicly available, so far as I'm aware. I'm not finding a definitive statement as to whether or not this is required in the US, though most significant publications, and now online sites, provide similar data. The Alliance for Audited Media (AAM) seems to be the principle source of circulation data in the US, per this Pew article (2023): "Newspapers Fact Sheet" <https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/fact-sheet/newspapers/ https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/fact-sheet/newspapers...> That also notes however: [T]hree of the highest-circulation daily papers in the U.S. – The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post – have in recent years not fully reported their digital circulation to AAM.
      - londons_explore 2y ago
        Most advertisers care about what ROI they'd get for their particular business. And the easiest way to determine that is with a test campaign of just a few hundred dollars. Most platforms even give you "free credits" to do exactly that (in many businesses, a few hundred dollars can be a big barrier, because the employee doesn't want to put it on their personal credit card, yet getting the paperwork in place to go through the accounts department is a lot of work). That means the platform-wide stats don't really matter. What matters is how cheaply the platform can get the right ads in front of the right eyeballs who will click through and buy a product. How well the platform can attribute purchases is a big part of it too. Thats why people like youtube have "Which of these companies have you heard of? A. Amazon, B. Gucci, C. Flambaths" surveys - because that's their way to measure (and charge for!) brand adverts which don't lead to direct sales.
    - onedognight 2y ago
      It looks like the posting stopped in 2019, so Twitter posted stats. X never has.
      - lofenfew 2y ago
        If you aren't logged in, the other of posts on someone's profile is randomized. That account shows posts from today for me.
- organsnyder 2y ago
  I somehow managed to mess up 2FA in my Twitter account shortly after Elon bought it. I think it was around when some 2FA options were only available to paid accounts. I was trying to delete it, so I decided the account was pretty well locked and just left it.
- doener 2y ago
  Yes, I gave up all of my accounts, but keep them online.
- thiht 2y ago
  I would have deactivated my Twitter account long ago if it didn’t make the username free to use. I don’t want someone to impersonate me on Twitter.
djohnston 2y ago
Few things I despise more than an absolute number provided with no context. Is 60K a lot? A little? The usual? How much does it deviate from the norm?
- londons_explore 2y ago
  Indeed. And on a site with 611 Million monthly active users, that means 0.01% are deactivating their accounts each day. 3% after a year. Sounds insiginificant to me.
  - bediger4000 2y ago
    611 million active user IDs. There's a lot of bots, and spammers with multiple user IDs. I'd be interested in seeing something about user IDs that scroll some minimum amount vs user IDs that just post.
  - wmoxam 2y ago
    How are they counting deactivation's? My account got nuked because I changed my birthday date for jokes and it locked me out for being 'too young' when I signed up way back in 2007. I would have needed to provide photos of government ID to re-activate so I let it go.
  - tzs 2y ago
    I think you've overlooked something: people can leave a social media site without deactivating their account. I haven't used Digg or Slashdot in at least a decade, for example, but never got rid of my accounts. I've also got a few alt Reddit accounts that I haven't logged into in a long time. I'd expect in general the number of people who leave a site but don't bother to actually go through the steps of deactivating the account to be quite a bit higher than the number that do deactivate.
- itishappy 2y ago
  Agreed. "For one week, an average of 60K per day left the platform." So... 420K that week (feels appropriate, lol). That's a bit under 0.1%. With 600M reported users, X can do this every day for 27 years. But I'm betting this week was an outlier for some reason or another.
r3r00t3d 2y ago
There's not much more a person can do for freedom than to cowardly run once people, who don't agree with you, get to open their mouth without being banned.
- endemic 2y ago
  I deleted my account because it wasn't fun anymore. It turned from sharing cool stuff and being able to connect with random famous people to politicized garbage. There's still cool stuff, but there's also plenty of cool stuff elsewhere (The Internet is a big place).
- redder23 2y ago
  [dead]
- Spivak 2y ago
  If I wanted replies to my posts to be the most offensive thing the person could think of just for the keks I would just go to 4chan where at least it's more creative. You can call it running away but it's not out of fear, it's because the quality of discussion dropped to nothing. It didn't used to be that bad when a post broke containment. I've had great discussions on HN with people who disagree with me on very fundamental issues on political topics and I would describe it as polite and informative.
  - mrangle 2y ago
    Low quality responses aren't a part of a discussion: they're simply to be ignored. This is part and parcel for the internet, everywhere and for everyone. Unless one chooses not to ignore them, but that's their specific choice to participate. Where exactly is there "quality of discussion", if we include low quality responses in that rating, in any political space that isn't siloed? It doesn't exist today, and if the space is siloed then it also doesn't exist by definition. It's okay to want to go where people agree with you more, even if it's because others aren't allowed in. But call it what it is, and note what it isn't.
    - 2y ago
neom 2y ago
If you're curious where the data comes from, it's from a FT report that used this as the source: https://www.similarweb.com/blog/insights/social-media-news/bluesky-sustained-growth/ https://www.similarweb.com/blog/insights/social-media-news/b...
jokethrowaway 2y ago
I always hated twitter, but I have to say I started using it in the last month or so. It's the only social network that feels unfiltered and not the typical politically correct crap. I can understand left wing people leaving the platform and they account for half of the population so the numbers make sense.
- subsection1h 2y ago
  I saw your comment and was interested in understanding why someone would want to create a Twitter/X account nowadays. Thanks for helping me understand. https://hn.algolia.com/?query=woke+author:jokethrowaway&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?query=woke+author:jokethrowaway&type... https://hn.algolia.com/?query=abortion+author:jokethrowaway&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?query=abortion+author:jokethrowaway&...
yyuugg 2y ago
X, as a platform, is absolutely cooked. I'm sure it will remain around the same way Truth social is around. A small group of right wing folks will hang out there and argue to their last breath that it's more free speech or something, but increasingly having an X account will be seen as kind of a weird trait. It'll make for some interesting stories a decade from now when we'll all reminisce about "remember how Musk fucked Twitter? Oh shit, is it still running?"
- mrangle 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - verdverm 2y ago
    > wildly popular It's not even in the top 10 and shrinking too
  - yyuugg 2y ago
    I talk about MySpace and Digg regularly, they are unpopular, and they are the exact thing happening here. I think we're in the interregnum period between X and whatever picks up the crown.
    - mrangle 2y ago
      Those aren't remotely comparable platforms. There isn't anything that currently exists to "pick up the crown" which itself doesn't identify in-full as a reaction to X. There's nothing in the human social-sphere that has become dominant by defining itself as a reaction to something else. That's first assuming that it'd overcome the second-to-market popularity issue.
dkobia 2y ago
Some of my issues with X. - The algorithm is extremely aggressive and antagonistic. Any signal (linger, view) on a post indicates you might want to see more of whatever it is. Usually it is posts that provoke the most reaction. - Posts with links are automatically down-ranked. - I've been seeing some of the most inexplicably offensive ads. X has been a good way to find my news blindspots. Unfortunately it seems to be taking a hard right lean lately.
edwardmacnamra 2y ago
[dead]
mensetmanusman 2y ago
60,000/600,000,000
sandy_coyote 2y ago
Twitter, Mastodon, Bluesky - I left them all after deciding that doom scrolling through any infinite app makes me feel like I'm stewing in someone else's kettle of advertainment slop. I read HN only because the content doesn't refresh too quickly and the comment threads are generally higher quality than tech posts on Reddit. Otherwise, substacks and email lists are doing it for me lately.

28 points by doener 2y ago

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

I wonder what the ratio of people actively deactivating to people silently never returning to the website/app is. At least 1 to 10 is my guess.

dredmorbius 2y ago
That should show up in MAU and time-on-site statistics. Which the site should be compelled to report to advertisers.
- londons_explore 2y ago
  X does seem to report stats like this to the public. https://x.com/XData/ https://x.com/XData/ Obviously there is probably a decent amount of cherry picking of the stats to report.
  - dredmorbius 2y ago
    I'm genuinely curious as to what if any disclosures, and possible business requirements / fraud risks, are presented by not having such disclosures for an advertising-supported business. Virtually any significant publishing platform has a press kit detailing circulation or equivalent numbers, which are in most cases publicly available, so far as I'm aware. I'm not finding a definitive statement as to whether or not this is required in the US, though most significant publications, and now online sites, provide similar data. The Alliance for Audited Media (AAM) seems to be the principle source of circulation data in the US, per this Pew article (2023): "Newspapers Fact Sheet" <https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/fact-sheet/newspapers/ https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/fact-sheet/newspapers...> That also notes however: [T]hree of the highest-circulation daily papers in the U.S. – The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post – have in recent years not fully reported their digital circulation to AAM.
    - londons_explore 2y ago
      Most advertisers care about what ROI they'd get for their particular business. And the easiest way to determine that is with a test campaign of just a few hundred dollars. Most platforms even give you "free credits" to do exactly that (in many businesses, a few hundred dollars can be a big barrier, because the employee doesn't want to put it on their personal credit card, yet getting the paperwork in place to go through the accounts department is a lot of work). That means the platform-wide stats don't really matter. What matters is how cheaply the platform can get the right ads in front of the right eyeballs who will click through and buy a product. How well the platform can attribute purchases is a big part of it too. Thats why people like youtube have "Which of these companies have you heard of? A. Amazon, B. Gucci, C. Flambaths" surveys - because that's their way to measure (and charge for!) brand adverts which don't lead to direct sales.
  - onedognight 2y ago
    It looks like the posting stopped in 2019, so Twitter posted stats. X never has.
    - lofenfew 2y ago
      If you aren't logged in, the other of posts on someone's profile is randomized. That account shows posts from today for me.
organsnyder 2y ago
I somehow managed to mess up 2FA in my Twitter account shortly after Elon bought it. I think it was around when some 2FA options were only available to paid accounts. I was trying to delete it, so I decided the account was pretty well locked and just left it.
doener 2y ago
Yes, I gave up all of my accounts, but keep them online.
thiht 2y ago
I would have deactivated my Twitter account long ago if it didn’t make the username free to use. I don’t want someone to impersonate me on Twitter.

djohnston 2y ago

Few things I despise more than an absolute number provided with no context. Is 60K a lot? A little? The usual? How much does it deviate from the norm?

londons_explore 2y ago
Indeed. And on a site with 611 Million monthly active users, that means 0.01% are deactivating their accounts each day. 3% after a year. Sounds insiginificant to me.
- bediger4000 2y ago
  611 million active user IDs. There's a lot of bots, and spammers with multiple user IDs. I'd be interested in seeing something about user IDs that scroll some minimum amount vs user IDs that just post.
- wmoxam 2y ago
  How are they counting deactivation's? My account got nuked because I changed my birthday date for jokes and it locked me out for being 'too young' when I signed up way back in 2007. I would have needed to provide photos of government ID to re-activate so I let it go.
- tzs 2y ago
  I think you've overlooked something: people can leave a social media site without deactivating their account. I haven't used Digg or Slashdot in at least a decade, for example, but never got rid of my accounts. I've also got a few alt Reddit accounts that I haven't logged into in a long time. I'd expect in general the number of people who leave a site but don't bother to actually go through the steps of deactivating the account to be quite a bit higher than the number that do deactivate.
itishappy 2y ago
Agreed. "For one week, an average of 60K per day left the platform." So... 420K that week (feels appropriate, lol). That's a bit under 0.1%. With 600M reported users, X can do this every day for 27 years. But I'm betting this week was an outlier for some reason or another.

r3r00t3d 2y ago

There's not much more a person can do for freedom than to cowardly run once people, who don't agree with you, get to open their mouth without being banned.

endemic 2y ago
I deleted my account because it wasn't fun anymore. It turned from sharing cool stuff and being able to connect with random famous people to politicized garbage. There's still cool stuff, but there's also plenty of cool stuff elsewhere (The Internet is a big place).
redder23 2y ago
[dead]
Spivak 2y ago
If I wanted replies to my posts to be the most offensive thing the person could think of just for the keks I would just go to 4chan where at least it's more creative. You can call it running away but it's not out of fear, it's because the quality of discussion dropped to nothing. It didn't used to be that bad when a post broke containment. I've had great discussions on HN with people who disagree with me on very fundamental issues on political topics and I would describe it as polite and informative.
- mrangle 2y ago
  Low quality responses aren't a part of a discussion: they're simply to be ignored. This is part and parcel for the internet, everywhere and for everyone. Unless one chooses not to ignore them, but that's their specific choice to participate. Where exactly is there "quality of discussion", if we include low quality responses in that rating, in any political space that isn't siloed? It doesn't exist today, and if the space is siloed then it also doesn't exist by definition. It's okay to want to go where people agree with you more, even if it's because others aren't allowed in. But call it what it is, and note what it isn't.
  - 2y ago

neom 2y ago

If you're curious where the data comes from, it's from a FT report that used this as the source: https://www.similarweb.com/blog/insights/social-media-news/bluesky-sustained-growth/ https://www.similarweb.com/blog/insights/social-media-news/b...

jokethrowaway 2y ago

I always hated twitter, but I have to say I started using it in the last month or so. It's the only social network that feels unfiltered and not the typical politically correct crap. I can understand left wing people leaving the platform and they account for half of the population so the numbers make sense.

subsection1h 2y ago
I saw your comment and was interested in understanding why someone would want to create a Twitter/X account nowadays. Thanks for helping me understand. https://hn.algolia.com/?query=woke+author:jokethrowaway&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?query=woke+author:jokethrowaway&type... https://hn.algolia.com/?query=abortion+author:jokethrowaway&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?query=abortion+author:jokethrowaway&...

yyuugg 2y ago

X, as a platform, is absolutely cooked. I'm sure it will remain around the same way Truth social is around. A small group of right wing folks will hang out there and argue to their last breath that it's more free speech or something, but increasingly having an X account will be seen as kind of a weird trait. It'll make for some interesting stories a decade from now when we'll all reminisce about "remember how Musk fucked Twitter? Oh shit, is it still running?"

mrangle 2y ago
[flagged]
- verdverm 2y ago
  > wildly popular It's not even in the top 10 and shrinking too
- yyuugg 2y ago
  I talk about MySpace and Digg regularly, they are unpopular, and they are the exact thing happening here. I think we're in the interregnum period between X and whatever picks up the crown.
  - mrangle 2y ago
    Those aren't remotely comparable platforms. There isn't anything that currently exists to "pick up the crown" which itself doesn't identify in-full as a reaction to X. There's nothing in the human social-sphere that has become dominant by defining itself as a reaction to something else. That's first assuming that it'd overcome the second-to-market popularity issue.

dkobia 2y ago

Some of my issues with X. - The algorithm is extremely aggressive and antagonistic. Any signal (linger, view) on a post indicates you might want to see more of whatever it is. Usually it is posts that provoke the most reaction. - Posts with links are automatically down-ranked. - I've been seeing some of the most inexplicably offensive ads. X has been a good way to find my news blindspots. Unfortunately it seems to be taking a hard right lean lately.

edwardmacnamra 2y ago

[dead]

mensetmanusman 2y ago

60,000/600,000,000

sandy_coyote 2y ago

Twitter, Mastodon, Bluesky - I left them all after deciding that doom scrolling through any infinite app makes me feel like I'm stewing in someone else's kettle of advertainment slop. I read HN only because the content doesn't refresh too quickly and the comment threads are generally higher quality than tech posts on Reddit. Otherwise, substacks and email lists are doing it for me lately.