One Year On, X Still Struggling After Musk’s Twitter Intervention

X, previously recognized as Twitter, was acquired by Elon Musk a year ago, embarking on a tumultuous path that has led to financial losses, a decline in advertisers, and a loss of trust.

Musk closed the $44 billion deal on October 27, 2022, and was the subject of a lawsuit that forced him to comply with purchase terms he wanted to escape.

Here’s a look at Musk’s first year as the platform’s owner.

– The sense of family gone –

In the days following his purchase, Musk quickly fired the executives who ran Twitter and took the publicly traded company private.

He also laid off most of the San Francisco-based company’s workforce, shrinking the ranks from 8,000 to less than 1,500.

Twitter employees were asked to commit unconditionally to their work and give up all remote work.

Former project manager Esther Crawford, who wrote about her experience online, said Musk replaced the company’s family atmosphere with one of fear.

He described Musk as bold but “cheeky” who surrounds himself with “yes-men” and makes decisions on instinct.

– Wrong information –

In the months following his authorization, Musk rolled back content moderation, reinstated accounts for previously banned extremist groups, and allowed users to purchase account verification, helping them profit from viral — but often inaccurate — posts.

Musk defended such changes in the name of free speech.

He disabled features put in place to prevent users from spewing false claims and put in new systems that encourage their spread, according to PolitiFact, a nonprofit fact-checking website.

Musk’s actions at X “have increased the sharing of misinformation and hate speech,” PolitiFact said Monday in a report echoing a number of groups that monitor toxic content on social media.

The rapidly evolving conflict between Israel and Hamas has been seen as one of the first real tests of Musk’s version of the platform during a major crisis. For many experts, the results confirm their worst fears: the changes have made it a challenge to separate truth from fiction.

“It’s sobering, though not surprising, to see Musk’s reckless decisions exacerbate an already tragic information crisis on Twitter about the conflict between Israel and Hamas,” Free Press senior counsel Nora Benavidez told AFP.

This month, the European Commission announced it was investigating X for spreading disinformation and terrorist content related to the conflict between Israel and Hamas.

X CEO Linda Yaccarino has stated that the platform takes trust and security seriously, but researchers have expressed pessimism, saying the site has abandoned efforts to elevate the best news sources.

– Money means –

Over the past year, the platform’s advertising business collapsed in part when marketers were malicious in X.

Insider Intelligence predicts that X will end 2023 with ad revenue of $2.98 billion, compared to $4.14 billion in 2022.

Musk said earlier this year that the company’s value had more than halved to $20 billion, and some estimates put it even lower.

Musk began charging for once-free features on Twitter, such as blue tick marks originally intended as authenticity, in an attempt to monetize subscriptions.

And X recently started charging new users in New Zealand and the Philippines for basic features like sending messages in a trial designed to reduce spam.

Musk has proposed charging all X users, but the idea was widely circulated. Industry analysts said that would make X even less attractive to advertisers.

“X’s wounds are almost entirely self-inflicted,” Insider Intelligence analyst Jasmine Enberg told AFP.

“Musk’s view of the platform as a technology he could remake his vision for, rather than a social network built on people and ad dollars, is the single biggest reason for the exodus of advertisers, declining users, and loss of its status as a central hub for news.”

Speaking at a recent tech conference, Yaccarino estimated the number of daily active X users at 225 million, a drop of more than 10 percent from when Musk bought the company.

Twitter dropouts have become something of a diaspora, spreading to Mastodon, Bluesky, Threads and other platforms in search of a new social media home.

– Right tilt –

In the meantime, far-right content has flourished on X.

Musk reinstated former President Donald Trump’s account and shut down a group dedicated to fighting election misinformation.

Former Fox news anchor Tucker Carlson, known for his radical conservative views, started the show on X after he was fired from the station.

Musk, who serves the mainstream right, hosted and streamed interviews with US Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.