Why X is a Dying Platform and How Elon Can Resuscitate It

Since Elon's takeover, I've seen way more confusion and disappointment with the lack of follower growth on X than prior.

It's because old Twitter was slowly dying but covered it up with excessive bot engagement and Elon's philosophical changes haven't slowed its decline.

Let me state, I'm not wishing for X's demise but I can see where this is headed. I hope my theory can be proven wrong because I enjoy using this platform. Also note, I have nothing personal against Elon: I think he has good intentions but I don't think his strategy is working.

Under Jack's ownership, while we did complain about overt ideological bias by Twitter, growth on Twitter was plausible with various strategies at work. It was far more predictable as to how to grow on Twitter, which was how I was able to gain 100k followers in a year.

But the first major clue that something wasn't right about this growth potential was when Elon attempted to pull out of his deal with Twitter. His reasoning was that Twitter had a greater amount of bots and spam accounts than he initially thought.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/08/tech/elon-musk-twitter-deal-exit/index.html

Twitter was likely not addressing these bot and spam accounts to inflate their numbers for advertisers, so they could continue to make money off of fake numbers. But the question is, what were these bot accounts used for? Who was running these accounts?

I suspect that growth on old Twitter was partially bot-driven and partially organic. I know for certain that there were various services where you could purchase followers aka pay someone to have their bots follow you.

The combination of an abundance of bot services and accounts plus a platform that wasn't incentivized to stop them for financial reasons created a false impression for everyone about genuine activity happening on Twitter.

So, when Elon finally closed the deal, he publicly made a promise to attack the bot problem on Twitter (which to his credit he has done). However, attacking the bot problem has exposed how artificial Twitter really is, which is one of the reasons why growth on X appears stagnant.

When Elon started his takeover, he quickly realized that Twitter wasn't profitable and was hemorrhaging money, leading to massive layoffs and a rush to have premium accounts to stay afloat. However, Elon's elevation of "replies" has made follower growth even more difficult.

Twitter under Jack had the potential for virality no matter what size your account was. Frequently you could witness an account with a few thousand followers grow amazingly with one viral tweet. However, Elon has de-ranked Retweets and elevated replies for advertiser space.

The more you reply, the more real estate for ads to be placed but the side effect is that Twitter is no longer about virality. Now, Twitter is about turning everyone into "Reply Guys" but this only solidifies that the top accounts will remain as the top accounts.

Lastly, many of you might not like this but free speech platforms aren't profitable. While personally I don't mind seeing varying viewpoints (even the extreme ones), normies don't like being in this type of environment. For Elon to make money, he has to attract normal people.

X isn't a casual environment for your normie parents like Facebook. Your grandma doesn't want psycho commies or neo-Nazis replying to her mild opinions. In 2022, 27% of the US Population used Twitter/X, now it's 19%. Usage has dropped 30% since 2023. (Source: http://tiny.cc/xigvyz)

So, I see two possible outcomes: Either Elon backtracks on “free speech” in hopes of attracting normies and larger corporate sponsors or he'll reach a point where he'll make a business decision to get rid of it through a sale or by ending it entirely.

Elon might be the richest man in the world but you don't become that by making repeated bad business moves. He knows that buying X wasn't a good business decision but he's trying to find a financial justification to keep it afloat.

In the meantime, you're probably not going to grow because this place isn't adding new users but instead, you're all fighting for the same small (and shrinking) pool of people who are active on X.

Elon is paying people to stay on X because he needs the big accounts to be happy and if the large accounts leave (or become less active), X loses money. He's put all his eggs in the influencer basket but it comes at a cost for everyone else's growth.