X-Twitter Uncertain Future
I saw both of these headlines yesterday, contradictory as they seem:
- Bluesky hits new user landmark as The Guardian leads huge X-odus
- Seeking favor with Musk and Trump, advertisers plot return to X
How could so many brands and users leave while advertisers plan a return? The answer to that question is simple.
Musk has politicized X so much that it’s now complicated. As a brand manager, do you leave it because it is essentially a right-wing tool, or do you need to stay because those same right-wingers now wield the power of the Federal government and might target you?
I haven’t deleted my account because I still have tools that automatically share new posts to the platform, and I didn’t want to punish followers who were still using it to follow my blogs. But I haven’t actively opened the app or attempted to interact there. At this point, I’m ready to walk away entirely. Shortly, I will no longer be on the platform, and if you are on it, I encourage you to leave as well. It might take me a little while to untie it from various automated tools first.
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I thought about these headlines yesterday. Maybe we shouldn’t consider X-Twitter’s market-value collapse a horrendous business decision. Perhaps this was always a $44 billion donation in kind to the Trump campaign in exchange for an oversized level of power and influence. Musk turned Twitter into X – a right-wing propaganda machine. It undoubtedly contributed to the radicalization of many in Trump’s favor. It assisted in the spread of right-wing misinformation. (Springfield’s pets, schools doing sex-change operations, made-up stories about Harris and Walz, etc.)
Those of us wondering how Musk could be such a poor businessman might want to consider the possibility that it was always something else entirely. It was always about converting a wildly popular social media platform into the biggest propaganda tool in history. It worked, and what is happening now is precisely what should happen to propaganda tools. Once you realize that’s all it is and you don’t agree with the propaganda on offer, you should ignore it. The departure is when users see Musk and his platform for what it is and give up the last vestige of hope that it will ever return to being something different.
Of course, those users who love being in the propaganda machine will stay and celebrate that it will continue to become even more of one. Only it is aligned with a government all-in on propaganda and disinformation. That’s going to keep it relevant for some.
Not for me, though. It hasn’t been relevant for a long time, and now, instead of trying to be kind to readers using that platform, I’m asking you to leave it, too. Follow me on other platforms, or ditch the idea of using social media platforms to follow your favorite blogs and subscribe to the newsletters instead.
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