19 ms·

X has been nothing short of an exercise in brand destruction. However, despite all the drama, it still stands, it still exists, and it remains relevant.

• paride5745 1y ago
  Let's be honest, there is no real alternative.
  • spacechild1 1y ago
    What's wrong with Bluesky?
    • jacooper 1y ago
      It's irrelevant, no body uses it
    • paride5745 1y ago
      Bluesky is not a real decentralized system as the company behind it say. Bluesky (the company) controls most key parts of the network, and it is basically impossible to setup a really decentralised alternative provider for the ATProto network, like you can do today with ActivityPub (Mastodon) or Nostr. Sure, you can setup you PDS and own your data, but it is useless without the Relays and a self-hosted Firehose, and running you own website is basically impossible. And lastly, let's keep in mind that BSky is a commercial entity, not a no-profit like Mastodon or a commmunity effort like Nostr. And yes, I am ignoring the political toxicity of the network because I think the technical aspects are bad enough.
      • pfraze 1y ago
        Multiple people have set up their own relays (which, by the way, is the firehose), and multiple people have set up their own application backends (which I think is what you're calling the relay) It's fully possible to stand up the network on your own infrastructure, and to communicate with other providers
  • codingdave 1y ago
    "Not using it." is a completely acceptable alternative. It does not actually solve a problem in one's life.
    • paride5745 1y ago
      Definitely. RSS is still great for news and Signal/Telegram/Whatsapp are more than enough to keep connected with friends&family.
• alpha_squared 1y ago
  Which really says a lot about how hard it is to leave platforms. The network effect is hard to overcome.
  • taurath 1y ago
    There's no technical reason that one couldn't move from platform to platform and link identities - the restrictions around IP and platform lock-in only benefit the platform owner, ensuring that competition will be stifled rather than the platform made useful for its users. The sad part is that ad networks know more about our connections across platforms than we're allowed to.
    • gchamonlive 1y ago
      There is also no technical reason people have to stay, because tech isn't the problem here. The value in these platforms aren't in the range of features they provide, but the engagement between individuals and the community and the value of the information it generates.
    • baby 1y ago
      how do you move platform when you have >10k followers on twitter?
      • taurath 1y ago
        If you can be found on any other platform, your followers will be able to follow to those. There’s no benefit to being on one platform.
        • baby 1y ago
          Things you can say when you have 10 followers on twitter
  • 4gotunameagain 1y ago
    Which reinforces the concept of a digital fiefdom; the owners of said platforms have this immense power only because they were the first to implement their ideas during the internet boom. And now we're stuck with Zuckerberg, Musk and Bezos. Out of all people, the last ones I would choose to have unelected power. Okay maybe the last one would be Joe Rogan.
• deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
• rvz 1y ago
  ..and 3 years later has a combined valuation with xAI of $113B. Those waiting for X to collapse are going to wait a lot longer than the original 6 months that it was predicted to collapse after the November 2022 takeover.
  • djeastm 1y ago
    >..and 3 years later has a combined valuation with xAI of $113B. This might be like Stacey King, a Chicago Bulls player, jokingly claiming he and Michael Jordan "combined to score 70 points" on a night when Jordan scored 69 points
    • shortrounddev2 1y ago
      "Dinesh, don't fall for his “aw, shucks" routine. He is a shrewd businessman, and together, we have over $20,036,000 at our disposal"
    • nailer 1y ago
      But Twitter/X owns that training data. Tesla (or whatever else you’re trying to say is Stacey King) does not.
  • CyberMacGyver 1y ago
    xAI tried to raise $20 billion in equity in April but wound up with only $5 billion & had to issue $5 billion in junk bonds last week. You can value yourself $44 billion but the market doesn’t think it’s anywhere close
  • matwood 1y ago
    > ..and 3 years later has a combined valuation with xAI of $113B. Haha...ok. I gave a bunch of stock from one of my companies to another one of my companies and made up a value during the transaction.
  • moomin 1y ago
    To misquote an adage: Elon Musk can stay irrational longer than I can stay solvent.
• lokar 1y ago
  [flagged]
• mrweasel 1y ago
  More and more I think Musk managed to his take over of Twitter pretty successfully. X still isn't as strong a brand as Twitter where, but it's doing okay. A lot of the users who X need to stay on the platform, journalists and politicians, are still there. The only issue is that Musk vastly overpaid for Twitter, but if he plans to keep it and use it for his political ambitions, that might not matter. Also remember that while many agree that $44B was a bit much, most did still put Twitter at 10s of billions, not the $500M I think you could justify. The firings, which was going to tank Twitter also turned out reasonably well. Turns out they didn't need all those people.
  • threetonesun 1y ago
    Well sure if you give up on moderation, and close the platform to people who aren't signed in, and shut off the API then yes you didn't need the people supporting those parts of the platform. And I guess if you consider "the place with the MechaHitler AI" as good branding there's no arguing with you that it's doing just as well as Twitter.
    • mrweasel 1y ago
      I don't agree with the direction Musk has set for X, but businesswise it's not doing worse. Twitter was a financial catastrophe before the take over, so you didn't need much improvement. Moderation was a financial drain, the API didn't make them any money and none of the users seems to care all that much about the platform not being open to users without an account... because they all have accounts and wasn't able to interact with you anyway. The media seems to get a good laugh out if Grok arguing the plight of white South Africans and is fondness to Hitler, but I'm not seeing journalists and politicians leaving X in droves because of it.
      • amrocha 1y ago
        Most of the local journalists, politicians, game devs, and open source maintainers i followed left. It’s just US national pundits, bots, and bait monetization accounts there at this point.
      • 1y ago
• guywithahat 1y ago
  I certainly wouldn't call it brand destruction, a lot of people returned to X and while the branding has changed, I certainly wouldn't call it brand destruction
  • rtkwe 1y ago
    They had managed to get a verb into relatively common speech and their revenue has collapsed since the Musk take over I'd say it's pretty thoroughly destroyed.
    • guywithahat 1y ago
      I find this X doomsday talk is pretty isolated to reddit/other minor social media sites. The site itself is doing fine, and maintains a strong investor/startup ecosystem, with a slight fall in usage after the election (which isn't uncommon for Twitter/X). My understanding is that a few advertisers threatened to leave and then returned after a few days/weeks. It's a private company now so I don't know what their revenue looks like but they certainly don't seem to be low on cash given how much they've invested in AI. You may not use X but it's definitely not "destroyed" lol
      • rtkwe 1y ago
        It's growing... but from an all time low. Estimates put it at half of their ad revenue pre acquisition. A lot of advertisers did actually leave and seem to have largely stayed away or their CPM numbers are just way way down both of which are pretty bad. Also X isn't funding Grok, it's a separate B corp with funding of it's own, it's just been tightly integrated into X, so it doesn't really say anything about the money situation at Twitter/X. https://www.reuters.com/technology/x-report-first-annual-ad-revenue-growth-since-musks-takeover-data-shows-2025-03-26/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/x-report-first-annual-ad-...
        • aorloff 1y ago
          My very first thought on the news that Yaccarino is leaving is that Twitter needs a new CEO who can sell some shares.
• gorwell 1y ago
  X is still ground zero for news, and it saved free speech. In the fullness of time and distance it will be viewed by historians as one of the most important events in history.
  • baseballdork 1y ago
    Legitimately can't tell if this is sarcasm or not. Saved free speech??
    • gorwell 1y ago
      Yes, it did. Every large platform including Twitter was censoring its users due to state pressure. Even Facebook has since admitted that they were told to censor information that was true, and they knew to be true.
      • pstuart 1y ago
        You mean the story about Hunter Biden's laptop? That story? About Hunter Biden supposedly selling access to the president? I find it odd now that Trump is in office and has the entirety of the government to investigate corruption in the executive office he's suddenly gone silent about that. I guess that means that the executive office is now free of any taint of corruption!
        • rejekt 1y ago
          Biden issued a full and unconditional pardon for his son for any crimes during a 10 year period 2014-2024. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3dx9n3m9y2o https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3dx9n3m9y2o He later pardoned other family members and political allies.
          • pstuart 1y ago
            That was disappointing but understandable, considering who was following him into office. The Hunter Biden corruption story was true in the sense it was old school genteel corruption that virtually everybody in politics does: trade on their connections with promise of getting deals done and/or a veneer of legitimacy. It's a problem worthy of scrutiny but only if it is done across party lines. But this misses the entire point: the whole part about the Hunter Biden laptop story was to paint Joe Biden as crooked and was being done solely as negative campaigning. That's it, and it is self evident in how the story dropped once it was no longer useful for that means. But the millions of Americans who were outraged by this supposed corruption are just fine with it when it's done by their Dear Leader. That in a nutshell summarizes the "values" of the modern American conservative movement.
• sixothree 1y ago
  I feel like I need to shower every time I end up there. The place is repulsive to me.
• sergiotapia 1y ago
  X saved free speech online. Without Musk acquiring it, we would have continued to slip into this franken-Resetera level of discourse. Thank God! X is the platform where everyone can speak as long as it doesn't break the law. That's fantastic. If you don't like a particular subject, you can just move on. That's what the internet was in the 2000s!
  • big_toast 1y ago
    Saved? Seems like it harmed the migration to more free protocol oriented services. One company controlling the algorithm and API to a global conversation. Verified badges getting ranked priority in replies and For You. A DM function that barely functions. Private chats as a promise instead of cryptographic guarantee?
    • sergiotapia 1y ago
      >free protocol oriented services. Love all of these on paper, I think any tech person would. But they are non-starters. Normies have zero chance of ever deciding to use these.
      • big_toast 1y ago
        Just like all the normies who don't use web browsers, email, podcasts, calendars, jpeg image standards. Like how btc and ethereum finally died out and companies aren't adopting stable coins. Yes.. non-starters, too complicated and fiddly..
  • UncleSlacky 1y ago
    > everyone can speak as long as it doesn't break the law I have one word for you: "cisgender". https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/x-cisgender-slur-cis-elon-musk-b2545355.html https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/x-cisgender-slur-cis-elon...
    • throwaway37153 1y ago
      > “You may not directly attack other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, caste, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease,” How does this make it different than other website's policies in terms of free speech?
• whalesalad 1y ago
  Does it? It is 100% a bot farm full of right-wing propaganda. Create a new account and start tweeting. Every single like/reply you get will be from a bot pretending to be either Elon, or Elon's mom, or someone who has recently won the lottery and is going to give it away to all of their followers. Every single recommended post you'll get in your feed will be the most unhinged q-anon conspiracy shit you can imagine. There is zero discourse happening there. It is an echo chamber of psychotic individuals. Threads on the other hand is actually a pretty fun place to be these days. I get a lot of interaction with random strangers on all kinds of topics, and it is as good or bad as you want it to be.
  • calmoo 1y ago
    I’ve only been on twitter for a year and at the start my algo feed was full of awful crap, but after I followed a few good accounts I mostly now just get AI focussed tech stuff. I think your experience isn’t universal.
• BeetleB 1y ago
  Twitter's brand was quite stained before Elon took over, so this is really a case of "continuing the brand destruction" But really, the brand doesn't matter if you can't keep the lights on. If Elon has managed to make X profitable, it is more successful than Twitter likely would ever have been.
• TheAlchemist 1y ago
  I was following fintwit quite a lot at a time, and some accounts already moved to Bluesky some time ago. I'm periodically checking via nitter, and 90% of answers are spam at this point. It will take some time for complete destruction, but the path is quite clear.
• beambot 1y ago
  Tesla itself seems primed for a similar fate at an even greater magnitude -- the bigger they are, the harder they fall.
• jgrowl 1y ago
  Was pretty effective using as a propaganda tool to get a candidate of the owner's choice elected. I don't see any reason to assume that wasn't the intended goal from the beginning. No reason to assume that won't be how it is used in the future.
• happosai 1y ago
  Relevant to who? My employers marketing has stopped using X and posts now on LinkedIn exclusively (we do B2B software). My partners workplace does consumer marketing and only TikTok (for young people) and Facebook (for old people) are truly relevant anymore. If a customer has lots of money to waste, they'll also do Instagram and YouTube.
• grishka 1y ago
  And most people, me included, still call it Twitter.
• beAbU 1y ago
  And I blame the media. Politicians continue to post, and the media continue to quote them from twitter. I think it's shameful that politicians and other officials are using twitter as some sort of official media/announcement platform. In my own African country twitter has become the de-facto channel for various updates and announcements by various state organs and officials. Makes it even worse when you consider the majority of the population has no reliable way to access this information. And now its locked behind a user account! And it's owned by a potentially rival politician!
  • brigandish 1y ago
    I've been able to access posts for a while now without logging in, I think that might have changed when they got rid of blocking.
    • beAbU 1y ago
      It's usually possible to access a single post if it's directly linked, but not possible to go to the profile from there, or access other tweets or relevant discussions about the post you have open. That's my experience anyway.
• spacechild1 1y ago
  > and it remains relevant. Which I find truely shocking. Who in their right mind still wants to support such a platform (except for Elon's target audience, of course)? Just don't use the damn thing. (I have never used Twitter I the first place and I don't think I've been missing out.)
• mnky9800n 1y ago
  X collects data in all the places Teslas don't get sold. That is why it continues to remain of value. It is an intelligence generating engine for places that otherwise have very little.
• wonderwonder 1y ago
  There is not a single place on the internet that comes close to providing up to the minute news and updates. X was the only place one could monitor the Israel / Iran conflict in almost real time. Same for a variety of other events. There is nothing else like it. Its the only place where anyone can have interactions with politicians, scientists, CEOs, etc. It is the only place that covers and provides a wide variety of information that traditional media does not. Almost no media companies reported that a dozen domestic terrorists ambushed ICE officers and shot one in the neck this past week. As far as I know, none reported on the Minnesota Department of Human Services requiring that hiring managers must provide a hiring justification to hire a white man. Violation of that policy results in termination. So state sponsored racism in the state of the governor that would have been our VP. Its the only place you can get a picture of what's going on. There is of course mountains of lies you have to filter through, no doubt spurred on by the monetization of X for posters. For all its faults and madness (Grok going full mecha-hitler was wild) there is no where else like it. Side note, the day after mecha-hitler xAi released Grok4 which appears to be the most powerful model to date on some tests, beating o3, Gemini 2.5 Pro and Anthropic Claude 4 Opus. There is a non zero chance that xAi, which is part of the same company that holds X wins the AI race
• grafmax 1y ago
  That’s because it’s not really brand destruction so much as normalizing the support for fascism by a brand.
• PaulHoule 1y ago
  It's the horror of two-sided markets. You could probably turn off the DNS and unplug the server it would keep running somehow.