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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

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.
  - greenie_beans 1y ago
    you must not know many journalists because they certainly left in droves
    - Lu2025 1y ago
      Left where?
      - greenie_beans 1y ago
        twitter
  - archagon 1y ago
    The job of journalists and politicians is to broadcast to as wide an audience as they can. It is not particularly surprising that many retain Twitter accounts for the marketing value.
    - bikezen 1y ago
      After NPR left twitter they saw a 1% drop in traffic from socials. It is not a useful platform. Source: https://niemanreports.org/npr-twitter-musk/ https://niemanreports.org/npr-twitter-musk/
  - kevinventullo 1y ago
    I don’t think we can say for sure whether it’s doing worse businesswise since the numbers aren’t public. But consider e.g. https://www.adweek.com/media/advertisers-returning-to-x/ https://www.adweek.com/media/advertisers-returning-to-x/ “From January to September 2024, marketing intelligence platform MediaRadar found that (X’s former top advertisers including Comcast, IBM, Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Lionsgate Entertainment) collectively spent less than $3.3 million on X. This is a 98% year-over-year drop from the $170 million spent during the same period in 2023.”
  - freejazz 1y ago
    Well, the HitlerGrok thing happened yesterday... I ask this genuinely and without any intent to cause offense: given your name, are you a bit?
- rockemsockem 1y ago
  I will fondly remind folks that Grok isn't even the first LLM to become a Nazi on Twitter. Remember Tay Tweets? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tay_(chatbot) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tay_(chatbot) Honestly I really don't think a bad release of an LLM that was rolled back is really the condemnation you think it is.
  - amrocha 1y ago
    There’s a difference between a 3rd party twitter bot and grok. And it’s not a “bad release”, it’s been like this ever since it launched. Funny how ChatGPT is vanilla and grok somehow has a new racist thing to say every other week.
    - timschmidt 1y ago
      This ChatGPT? https://futurism.com/chatgpt-encouraged-murder-sam-altman https://futurism.com/chatgpt-encouraged-murder-sam-altman
      - amrocha 1y ago
        Not to say there aren’t problems with ChatGPT, but it generally steers clear of controversial subjects unless coaxed into it. Grok actively leans into racism and nazism.
        timschmidt 1y ago
        It seems that there is tremendous incentive for people like yourself (I see you're very active in these comments) to claim that. But I see you've presented no quantitative evidence. Given the politicization of the systems and individuals involved, without evidence, it all reads like partisan mud slinging. Any LLM can be convinced to say just about anything. Pliny has shown that time and time again.
        arp242 1y ago
        Does ChatGPT start ranting about Jews and "White Genocide" unprompted? How can I even quantify that it doesn't do that? This is a classic "anything that can't be empirically measured is invalid and can be dismissed" mistake. It would be nice if we could easily empirically measure everything, but that's not how the world works. The ChatGPT article is of a rather different nature where ChatGPT went off the rails after a long conversation with a troubled person. That's not good, but just no the same as "start spewing racism on unrelated questions".
moomin 1y ago
I think it’s hard to conclude that the people weren’t needed given how spectacularly it tanked.
- mrweasel 1y ago
  Has it tanked? X is still running, it still has millions of users.
  - reverendsteveii 1y ago
    it's worth less than half of what he paid for it, lost 30 million users and went from being the default microblog to facing real competition in daily active users from ~~bluesky~~threads (https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/07/threads-is-nearing-xs-daily-app-users-new-data-shows/ https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/07/threads-is-nearing-xs-dail...). Building what X is today from nothing would be an incredible accomplishment but building what X is today out of what Twitter was in 2022 is still a pretty miserable failure. Not to mention that now Grok is just openly white supremacist, calling itself MechaHitler and is flat out accusing Jewish people of wanting to kill white babies (https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/elon-musk-grok-antisemitic-posts-x-rcna217634 https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/elon-musk-grok-antisem...)
    - bpodgursky 1y ago
      https://bsky.jazco.dev/stats https://bsky.jazco.dev/stats You can judge for yourself whether bluesky is a competitive threat.
      - mh- 1y ago
        That link errors ("Failed to fetch" banner on the page) for me. Perhaps hugged to death, but I would be interested in the DAUs/MAUs if they're available.
        reverendsteveii 1y ago
        https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/07/threads-is-nearing-xs-daily-app-users-new-data-shows/ https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/07/threads-is-nearing-xs-dail... I misremembered an article from yesterday. It's threads that's catching up w twitter.
egorfine 1y ago
Same opinion. I absolutely hate what he did to Twitter and never in my life I will call it "X" - BUT - it looks to me as if the engagement is thriving. Edit: clarified that the engagement is thriving
- Forgeties79 1y ago
  Thriving? Its valuation has tanked since his purchase and last I read they’re still actively losing users.
  - egorfine 1y ago
    Yes I know. But the platform has lots and lots of engagement. Stagnation did not happen. Quite the opposite.
    - Forgeties79 1y ago
      My understanding is overall engagement is also currently down
    - Intermernet 1y ago
      When I finally left Twitter most of the engagement was obviously bots either repeating other tweets or spamming unrelated dross on high activity threads for engagement farming. The number is high, but the quality is negligible.
      - egorfine 1y ago
        That was my experience as well. But then people came back. The "For you" tab has been much more interesting for me than previously and in my industry I see tons of interesting content. Again, I hate what EM did to Twitter but there's that.
        Forgeties79 1y ago
        That may be the case but from what I’m reading overall engagement is down this year. So I’m not really sure what metrics we’re using to say “they’re thriving” when ad dollars are down, engagement is down, user acquisition is down, valuation is down…
throw310822 1y ago
And btw, how many features have been brought live since Musk's takeover? If I'm not wrong, at least: long tweets, paid subscriptions, community notes, native video (?), grok... Anything else? Seems quite a lot after years of stagnation.
- martythemaniak 1y ago
  From your list, only grok. All the other stuff was already there.
- joering2 1y ago
  As a medicore programmer, other than AI I would imagine the rest of the list would take 2 weeks to program and implement.
  - throwpoaster 1y ago
    Keep trying, estimation is hard! You’ll improve!
  - chgs 1y ago
    “Long tweets” could be anything from changing a config variable to rewriting massive tomes of code. Unless you have knowledge of x’s internal code?
  - theonething 1y ago
    Yes, you are imagining.
- ceejayoz 1y ago
  Long tweets: 2017 (https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/07/twitter-officially-expands-its-character-count-to-280-starting-today/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/07/twitter-officially-expands...) Subscriptions: 2021 (https://www.reuters.com/technology/twitter-launches-subscription-based-feature-super-follows-2021-09-01/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/twitter-launches-subscrip...) Community Notes: 2021 (https://blog.x.com/en_us/topics/product/2021/introducing-birdwatch-a-community-based-approach-to-misinformation https://blog.x.com/en_us/topics/product/2021/introducing-bir...) Native video: 2012-2015 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vine_(service) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vine_(service) / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periscope_(service) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periscope_(service) / https://www.videonuze.com/article/twitter-unveils-30-second-native-video-feature https://www.videonuze.com/article/twitter-unveils-30-second-...) Musk buys Twitter: late 2022. That leaves… Grok.
archagon 1y ago
Fundamentally, the problem with Twitter is the burned bridge: there is a sizable population of interesting people who will never, under any circumstance return due to Musk’s insane behavior and ideology. This irreparably cripples it as a universal social network.
- timeon 1y ago
  Good example is here on HN. There used to be at least one (often more) Twitter link per day on the front page. Now it is around 3 per month.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
ahmeneeroe-v2 1y ago
>A lot of the users who X need to stay on the platform, journalists and politicians, are still there Twitter/X is the reason DJT became President. It happened accidentally (ie against the wishes of Twitter management) in 2016, they successfully suppressed him in 2020, and then Elon gave MAGA that platform in 2024, leading to DJT's successful election. As long as X is seen a kingmaker, someone will find it profitable to own/maintain, even if it doesn't convert Ads like Meta/Google.
- mvdtnz 1y ago
  If you think twitter made even 1% difference in 2016 I urge you to go and touch some grass. This stuff doesn't matter.
  - aaronax 1y ago
    Way more likely that it was /r/the_donald. In my humble, biased opinion--since I was around there but never really active on Twitter.
    - JSteph22 1y ago
      But Trump won more convincingly in 2024 without it? That doesn't support your argument.
      - lesuorac 1y ago
        Trump won by <1% in an election against a candidate who lost her only attempt at a primary and during a time period where western incumbents saw a 10+% drop due to their handling of covid inflation. 2024 isn't a story of how Trump outwitted his opponents but one of how his opponents tied their shoelaces together.
        lynx97 1y ago
        That is so true, and needs to be repeated more. DJT didn't win because he was so great. DJT won because the DMC candidate was so hilariously bad.
andrewflnr 1y ago
His mistakes cost less than they could have, sure, but to call it "pretty successful" I think it would have be better than if he just... didn't do much. He didn't have to be as open and aggressive about firing people or opening up the content policy. Openly insulting advertisers, for instance, was a completely unforced error. I think doing less would have kept more value (leaving ethics/morality entirely aside), and if that's true it's silly to say he managed well.
- consumer451 1y ago
  > pretty successful What are the metrics of success in this case? Making more money, a failure. Moving the Overton window to the very far-right, success. I would argue that the goal is quite obviously the latter, and Musk was very open about this. Given that was the goal, his takeover of Twitter was extremely successful!
  - andrewflnr 1y ago
    He sure claimed to also want to make money on it. With how much debt he took on, he didn't have much choice. Even with the political goal, he could have moved the overton window better by less ridiculous means. (And as I mentioned in another comment, his attempts to squirm out of the sale are evidence against it being a big master plan; for that to be a fakeout requires an unlikely level of depth.)
  - petesergeant 1y ago
    > I would argue that the goal is quite obviously the latter, and Musk was very open about this I mean he sued in order to not to have to buy it. To describe this as the _goal_ rather than just him making what he considers to be the best of a bad situation feels like a reach.
  - matthewdgreen 1y ago
    He also damaged one of the most valuable companies in existence. I don’t think “moving the Overton window slightly to the right in 2024,” if that’s what he did, is going to be as durable.
JeremyNT 1y ago
As a business it's a failure. As a way to influence public opinion? It's almost invaluable. For the world's richest man, that's a bargain at half the price.
- ActorNightly 1y ago
  I mean it didn't really influence public opinion that much, just enough to push election over the edge, and that was not just due to Twitter, but mostly due to non-voters.
- mgdev 1y ago
  Profitable operations, doubling previous adjusted EBITDA. [0] While not a yet an ROI-positive takeover, on an incredible valuation growth trajectory from the post-acquisition low. Likely to be positive the minute xAI meaningfully monetizes Grok. [1] Gains strategic access to global training data, and real-time human sentiment. [2] Incredible built-in distribution for new AI-powered products. [3] Literally tipped the scales in an election, a role typically reserved for traditional media companies. [4] Yes, a total failure of a business. /s [0]:https://x.com/Austen/status/1887363437518270757 https://x.com/Austen/status/1887363437518270757 [1]:https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/12/the-xai-x-merger-is-a-good-deal-if-youre-betting-on-musks-empire/ https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/12/the-xai-x-merger-is-a-good... [2]:https://www.reuters.com/technology/elon-musk-says-xai-will-use-public-tweets-ai-model-training-2023-07-14/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/elon-musk-says-xai-will-u... [3]:https://digiday.com/marketing/with-600-million-users-xs-linda-yaccarino-doubles-down-on-dismissing-journalism/ https://digiday.com/marketing/with-600-million-users-xs-lind... [4]:https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/07/x-formerly-twitter-becomes-no-1-app-on-u-s-app-store-on-news-of-tucker-carlson-putin-interview/ https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/07/x-formerly-twitter-becomes...
zero_shift 1y ago
I cannot see how it was a success. 1. He overpaid by tens of billions. That is a phenomenal amount of money to lose on an unforced error. 2. Enough users, who produce enough content, have left to make X increasingly a forum for porn bots, scam accounts and political activists. It's losing its appeal as the place "where the news happens" and is instead becoming more niche. 3. The firings did not go well. X has struggled to ship new features and appears nowhere closer to the "everything app" Musk promised. It posts strange UUID error codes. The remaining developers seem to implement things primarily client side, to the extent I even wonder if they have lost their ability to safely roll out backend changes. 4. The capture of X by far-right agitators has led to long term brand damage for Tesla, Musk's most important business property. I can't see any positive outcome from it.
- baobun 1y ago
  I don't think DOGE would have happened without it. Maybe not even Trump winning the election. It wasn't good for the company but allowed Musk huge influence in politics and likely making it out with some really juicy data.
  - acjohnson55 1y ago
    I give a lot more weight to the $250M Elon spent on the campaign.
    - energy123 1y ago
      Advertising works well on local races. But for POTUS, I don't believe it moves the needle much. The bigger factors are whether the large media players back you (Murdoch, Musk), whether social media personalities back you, and whether the foreign intelligence agencies back you in their spamouflage and information ops (e.g. via the Internet Research Agency).
      - dinkumthinkum 1y ago
        You don't think the left had all these things in their favor? You think the media are all far right wing conservatives? People like Rachel Maddow and Oprah, you might consider to be much more right wing than even Dick Cheney? You don't think maybe there might be some issues out there that people voted on and maybe saying "I'm a middle class kld" and "I'm speaking" on a loop just didn't do it for them? No, it must be Murdoch, because Soros is a relative pauper by comparison. Really?
baby 1y ago
It's interesting because, as I'm reading this I agree with y'all, it's still stand and I'm still on it. Yet, as a major twitter user, who has a large number of followers and has benefited from twitter a lot (made many relationships, got a job through it, successfully launched a book and a company thanks to it, etc.) I seem to be using twitter less and less these days. I dislike Elon, but I need twitter so much that I can't leave. And yet, my feed which was so useful in the past, and filled with cryptography content, has become pure political ragebait content. To the point that it's less and less useful to me. I'm sad because there's just nowhere for me to go, all my followers are there.
- fsflover 1y ago
  Make a Mastodon account and post to both places simultaneously. They say Mastodon brings real discussions and engagement.
Lu2025 1y ago
It successfully served its purpose: gave us Trump.
deleted 1y ago
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amitrip 1y ago
[dead]

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.
- greenie_beans 1y ago
  you must not know many journalists because they certainly left in droves
  - Lu2025 1y ago
    Left where?
    - greenie_beans 1y ago
      twitter
- archagon 1y ago
  The job of journalists and politicians is to broadcast to as wide an audience as they can. It is not particularly surprising that many retain Twitter accounts for the marketing value.
  - bikezen 1y ago
    After NPR left twitter they saw a 1% drop in traffic from socials. It is not a useful platform. Source: https://niemanreports.org/npr-twitter-musk/ https://niemanreports.org/npr-twitter-musk/
- kevinventullo 1y ago
  I don’t think we can say for sure whether it’s doing worse businesswise since the numbers aren’t public. But consider e.g. https://www.adweek.com/media/advertisers-returning-to-x/ https://www.adweek.com/media/advertisers-returning-to-x/ “From January to September 2024, marketing intelligence platform MediaRadar found that (X’s former top advertisers including Comcast, IBM, Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Lionsgate Entertainment) collectively spent less than $3.3 million on X. This is a 98% year-over-year drop from the $170 million spent during the same period in 2023.”
- freejazz 1y ago
  Well, the HitlerGrok thing happened yesterday... I ask this genuinely and without any intent to cause offense: given your name, are you a bit?
rockemsockem 1y ago
I will fondly remind folks that Grok isn't even the first LLM to become a Nazi on Twitter. Remember Tay Tweets? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tay_(chatbot) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tay_(chatbot) Honestly I really don't think a bad release of an LLM that was rolled back is really the condemnation you think it is.
- amrocha 1y ago
  There’s a difference between a 3rd party twitter bot and grok. And it’s not a “bad release”, it’s been like this ever since it launched. Funny how ChatGPT is vanilla and grok somehow has a new racist thing to say every other week.
  - timschmidt 1y ago
    This ChatGPT? https://futurism.com/chatgpt-encouraged-murder-sam-altman https://futurism.com/chatgpt-encouraged-murder-sam-altman
    - amrocha 1y ago
      Not to say there aren’t problems with ChatGPT, but it generally steers clear of controversial subjects unless coaxed into it. Grok actively leans into racism and nazism.
      - timschmidt 1y ago
        It seems that there is tremendous incentive for people like yourself (I see you're very active in these comments) to claim that. But I see you've presented no quantitative evidence. Given the politicization of the systems and individuals involved, without evidence, it all reads like partisan mud slinging. Any LLM can be convinced to say just about anything. Pliny has shown that time and time again.
        arp242 1y ago
        Does ChatGPT start ranting about Jews and "White Genocide" unprompted? How can I even quantify that it doesn't do that? This is a classic "anything that can't be empirically measured is invalid and can be dismissed" mistake. It would be nice if we could easily empirically measure everything, but that's not how the world works. The ChatGPT article is of a rather different nature where ChatGPT went off the rails after a long conversation with a troubled person. That's not good, but just no the same as "start spewing racism on unrelated questions".

moomin 1y ago

I think it’s hard to conclude that the people weren’t needed given how spectacularly it tanked.

mrweasel 1y ago
Has it tanked? X is still running, it still has millions of users.
- reverendsteveii 1y ago
  it's worth less than half of what he paid for it, lost 30 million users and went from being the default microblog to facing real competition in daily active users from ~~bluesky~~threads (https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/07/threads-is-nearing-xs-daily-app-users-new-data-shows/ https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/07/threads-is-nearing-xs-dail...). Building what X is today from nothing would be an incredible accomplishment but building what X is today out of what Twitter was in 2022 is still a pretty miserable failure. Not to mention that now Grok is just openly white supremacist, calling itself MechaHitler and is flat out accusing Jewish people of wanting to kill white babies (https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/elon-musk-grok-antisemitic-posts-x-rcna217634 https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/elon-musk-grok-antisem...)
  - bpodgursky 1y ago
    https://bsky.jazco.dev/stats https://bsky.jazco.dev/stats You can judge for yourself whether bluesky is a competitive threat.
    - mh- 1y ago
      That link errors ("Failed to fetch" banner on the page) for me. Perhaps hugged to death, but I would be interested in the DAUs/MAUs if they're available.
      - reverendsteveii 1y ago
        https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/07/threads-is-nearing-xs-daily-app-users-new-data-shows/ https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/07/threads-is-nearing-xs-dail... I misremembered an article from yesterday. It's threads that's catching up w twitter.

egorfine 1y ago

Same opinion. I absolutely hate what he did to Twitter and never in my life I will call it "X" - BUT - it looks to me as if the engagement is thriving. Edit: clarified that the engagement is thriving

Forgeties79 1y ago
Thriving? Its valuation has tanked since his purchase and last I read they’re still actively losing users.
- egorfine 1y ago
  Yes I know. But the platform has lots and lots of engagement. Stagnation did not happen. Quite the opposite.
  - Forgeties79 1y ago
    My understanding is overall engagement is also currently down
  - Intermernet 1y ago
    When I finally left Twitter most of the engagement was obviously bots either repeating other tweets or spamming unrelated dross on high activity threads for engagement farming. The number is high, but the quality is negligible.
    - egorfine 1y ago
      That was my experience as well. But then people came back. The "For you" tab has been much more interesting for me than previously and in my industry I see tons of interesting content. Again, I hate what EM did to Twitter but there's that.
      - Forgeties79 1y ago
        That may be the case but from what I’m reading overall engagement is down this year. So I’m not really sure what metrics we’re using to say “they’re thriving” when ad dollars are down, engagement is down, user acquisition is down, valuation is down…

throw310822 1y ago

And btw, how many features have been brought live since Musk's takeover? If I'm not wrong, at least: long tweets, paid subscriptions, community notes, native video (?), grok... Anything else? Seems quite a lot after years of stagnation.

martythemaniak 1y ago
From your list, only grok. All the other stuff was already there.
joering2 1y ago
As a medicore programmer, other than AI I would imagine the rest of the list would take 2 weeks to program and implement.
- throwpoaster 1y ago
  Keep trying, estimation is hard! You’ll improve!
- chgs 1y ago
  “Long tweets” could be anything from changing a config variable to rewriting massive tomes of code. Unless you have knowledge of x’s internal code?
- theonething 1y ago
  Yes, you are imagining.
ceejayoz 1y ago
Long tweets: 2017 (https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/07/twitter-officially-expands-its-character-count-to-280-starting-today/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/07/twitter-officially-expands...) Subscriptions: 2021 (https://www.reuters.com/technology/twitter-launches-subscription-based-feature-super-follows-2021-09-01/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/twitter-launches-subscrip...) Community Notes: 2021 (https://blog.x.com/en_us/topics/product/2021/introducing-birdwatch-a-community-based-approach-to-misinformation https://blog.x.com/en_us/topics/product/2021/introducing-bir...) Native video: 2012-2015 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vine_(service) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vine_(service) / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periscope_(service) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periscope_(service) / https://www.videonuze.com/article/twitter-unveils-30-second-native-video-feature https://www.videonuze.com/article/twitter-unveils-30-second-...) Musk buys Twitter: late 2022. That leaves… Grok.

archagon 1y ago

Fundamentally, the problem with Twitter is the burned bridge: there is a sizable population of interesting people who will never, under any circumstance return due to Musk’s insane behavior and ideology. This irreparably cripples it as a universal social network.

timeon 1y ago
Good example is here on HN. There used to be at least one (often more) Twitter link per day on the front page. Now it is around 3 per month.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

ahmeneeroe-v2 1y ago

>A lot of the users who X need to stay on the platform, journalists and politicians, are still there Twitter/X is the reason DJT became President. It happened accidentally (ie against the wishes of Twitter management) in 2016, they successfully suppressed him in 2020, and then Elon gave MAGA that platform in 2024, leading to DJT's successful election. As long as X is seen a kingmaker, someone will find it profitable to own/maintain, even if it doesn't convert Ads like Meta/Google.

mvdtnz 1y ago
If you think twitter made even 1% difference in 2016 I urge you to go and touch some grass. This stuff doesn't matter.
- aaronax 1y ago
  Way more likely that it was /r/the_donald. In my humble, biased opinion--since I was around there but never really active on Twitter.
  - JSteph22 1y ago
    But Trump won more convincingly in 2024 without it? That doesn't support your argument.
    - lesuorac 1y ago
      Trump won by <1% in an election against a candidate who lost her only attempt at a primary and during a time period where western incumbents saw a 10+% drop due to their handling of covid inflation. 2024 isn't a story of how Trump outwitted his opponents but one of how his opponents tied their shoelaces together.
      - lynx97 1y ago
        That is so true, and needs to be repeated more. DJT didn't win because he was so great. DJT won because the DMC candidate was so hilariously bad.

andrewflnr 1y ago

His mistakes cost less than they could have, sure, but to call it "pretty successful" I think it would have be better than if he just... didn't do much. He didn't have to be as open and aggressive about firing people or opening up the content policy. Openly insulting advertisers, for instance, was a completely unforced error. I think doing less would have kept more value (leaving ethics/morality entirely aside), and if that's true it's silly to say he managed well.

consumer451 1y ago
> pretty successful What are the metrics of success in this case? Making more money, a failure. Moving the Overton window to the very far-right, success. I would argue that the goal is quite obviously the latter, and Musk was very open about this. Given that was the goal, his takeover of Twitter was extremely successful!
- andrewflnr 1y ago
  He sure claimed to also want to make money on it. With how much debt he took on, he didn't have much choice. Even with the political goal, he could have moved the overton window better by less ridiculous means. (And as I mentioned in another comment, his attempts to squirm out of the sale are evidence against it being a big master plan; for that to be a fakeout requires an unlikely level of depth.)
- petesergeant 1y ago
  > I would argue that the goal is quite obviously the latter, and Musk was very open about this I mean he sued in order to not to have to buy it. To describe this as the _goal_ rather than just him making what he considers to be the best of a bad situation feels like a reach.
- matthewdgreen 1y ago
  He also damaged one of the most valuable companies in existence. I don’t think “moving the Overton window slightly to the right in 2024,” if that’s what he did, is going to be as durable.

JeremyNT 1y ago

As a business it's a failure. As a way to influence public opinion? It's almost invaluable. For the world's richest man, that's a bargain at half the price.

ActorNightly 1y ago
I mean it didn't really influence public opinion that much, just enough to push election over the edge, and that was not just due to Twitter, but mostly due to non-voters.
mgdev 1y ago
Profitable operations, doubling previous adjusted EBITDA. [0] While not a yet an ROI-positive takeover, on an incredible valuation growth trajectory from the post-acquisition low. Likely to be positive the minute xAI meaningfully monetizes Grok. [1] Gains strategic access to global training data, and real-time human sentiment. [2] Incredible built-in distribution for new AI-powered products. [3] Literally tipped the scales in an election, a role typically reserved for traditional media companies. [4] Yes, a total failure of a business. /s [0]:https://x.com/Austen/status/1887363437518270757 https://x.com/Austen/status/1887363437518270757 [1]:https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/12/the-xai-x-merger-is-a-good-deal-if-youre-betting-on-musks-empire/ https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/12/the-xai-x-merger-is-a-good... [2]:https://www.reuters.com/technology/elon-musk-says-xai-will-use-public-tweets-ai-model-training-2023-07-14/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/elon-musk-says-xai-will-u... [3]:https://digiday.com/marketing/with-600-million-users-xs-linda-yaccarino-doubles-down-on-dismissing-journalism/ https://digiday.com/marketing/with-600-million-users-xs-lind... [4]:https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/07/x-formerly-twitter-becomes-no-1-app-on-u-s-app-store-on-news-of-tucker-carlson-putin-interview/ https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/07/x-formerly-twitter-becomes...

zero_shift 1y ago

I cannot see how it was a success. 1. He overpaid by tens of billions. That is a phenomenal amount of money to lose on an unforced error. 2. Enough users, who produce enough content, have left to make X increasingly a forum for porn bots, scam accounts and political activists. It's losing its appeal as the place "where the news happens" and is instead becoming more niche. 3. The firings did not go well. X has struggled to ship new features and appears nowhere closer to the "everything app" Musk promised. It posts strange UUID error codes. The remaining developers seem to implement things primarily client side, to the extent I even wonder if they have lost their ability to safely roll out backend changes. 4. The capture of X by far-right agitators has led to long term brand damage for Tesla, Musk's most important business property. I can't see any positive outcome from it.

baobun 1y ago
I don't think DOGE would have happened without it. Maybe not even Trump winning the election. It wasn't good for the company but allowed Musk huge influence in politics and likely making it out with some really juicy data.
- acjohnson55 1y ago
  I give a lot more weight to the $250M Elon spent on the campaign.
  - energy123 1y ago
    Advertising works well on local races. But for POTUS, I don't believe it moves the needle much. The bigger factors are whether the large media players back you (Murdoch, Musk), whether social media personalities back you, and whether the foreign intelligence agencies back you in their spamouflage and information ops (e.g. via the Internet Research Agency).
    - dinkumthinkum 1y ago
      You don't think the left had all these things in their favor? You think the media are all far right wing conservatives? People like Rachel Maddow and Oprah, you might consider to be much more right wing than even Dick Cheney? You don't think maybe there might be some issues out there that people voted on and maybe saying "I'm a middle class kld" and "I'm speaking" on a loop just didn't do it for them? No, it must be Murdoch, because Soros is a relative pauper by comparison. Really?

baby 1y ago

It's interesting because, as I'm reading this I agree with y'all, it's still stand and I'm still on it. Yet, as a major twitter user, who has a large number of followers and has benefited from twitter a lot (made many relationships, got a job through it, successfully launched a book and a company thanks to it, etc.) I seem to be using twitter less and less these days. I dislike Elon, but I need twitter so much that I can't leave. And yet, my feed which was so useful in the past, and filled with cryptography content, has become pure political ragebait content. To the point that it's less and less useful to me. I'm sad because there's just nowhere for me to go, all my followers are there.

fsflover 1y ago
Make a Mastodon account and post to both places simultaneously. They say Mastodon brings real discussions and engagement.

Lu2025 1y ago

It successfully served its purpose: gave us Trump.

deleted 1y ago

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amitrip 1y ago

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