It has now been almost two years since Elon Musk completed his acquisition of Twitter (now called X) on October 27, 2022. Since then, the platform has become an increasingly polarized and divisive space.
Musk promised to address some of the issues that had already frustrated users, particularly bots, abuse and misinformation. In 2023, he stated that there was less misinformation on the platform due to his efforts to combat the bots. However, others disagree and claim that misinformation is still widespread there.
A possible response to this may be seen in recent data from the Financial Times, which shows that the number of UK users of the platform has fallen by a third, while the number of US users has fallen by a fifth. The data used to make these conclusions may be questionable because it is difficult to determine user numbers directly from X.
The numbers also come against the backdrop of a disagreement over whether or not X's traffic is decreasing. But there is a notable trend in academia of individuals and some organizations moving to alternative platforms such as Bluesky and Threads or abandoning social media altogether.
Elon Musk has claimed that X is hitting record levels of user seconds, a measure of how long users spend on the site. However, advertising revenue has reportedly plummeted due to Musk's controversial changes, such as his “free speech” approach on the platform. If so, that will be reflected in the platform's financial performance, which is abysmal. The platform currently does not have a clear path to profitability.
Of course, X's loss was a gain for its competitors. Despite a rather slow start due to its invite-only model, Bluesky recently announced that it had surpassed 10 million users. That's still pretty small compared to X's 550 million users and Threads' 200 million users.
However, across all platforms, there are questions about how active users are and the proportion of bots compared to human users. Threads also benefit from the connection to Instagram.
The world's richest man can afford to let X depreciate from its $44 billion (£33.7 billion) purchase price. Likewise, Meta can probably afford to support threads. But Bluesky needs to find inventive ways to remain viable as a platform. So is it the right time for users to try something completely different on social media?
For alternatives to
Elon Musk bought Twitter in 2022.
Frederic Legrand – Comeo / Shutterstock
Bluesky and Mastodon's approach is to work more closely with their community to address issues such as abuse and fake information. Content moderation is difficult because it requires a lot of resources and support for those using the platform.
But the contrast with Elon Musk's approach to ownership is stark.
The problem for Bluesky, and to a lesser extent Mastodon, is that once a platform gains traction, it also attracts those with evil intentions. Think of it as the only nice, cool bar in town that suddenly becomes popular. As soon as everyone hears about the bar, the troublemakers arrive.
When that happens, the good people will have to find a bar somewhere else. Once an alternative platform becomes a means to reach many millions of people, the people who drove users away from X may fly there like moths to a flame.
Alternative approaches
A possible solution is a subscription model for social media alongside paid advertising. For growing platforms like Bluesky, sponsored posts and ads will be added as the number of users increases.
But as became clear with X, that probably won't be enough. X's annual revenue peaked at $5bn (£3.8bn) in 2021 and has been declining ever since. This also takes into account that the platform has eliminated thousands of jobs in the last two years.
The subscription model is not new in social media. X has its own paid blue checkmark and LinkedIn has a premium subscription. This alone is no guarantee of a profitable or functioning social media platform.
Owning a subscription-based social media platform isn't exactly fair either, as not everyone can afford to pay for it. The question is how much people would be willing to pay for a social media subscription that guarantees no ads and bots and proper moderation to remove abusive and fake information accounts.
The downside is that free users would have to deal with the inconvenience of advertisements on their timelines. Other models could come onto the market where non-profit and student accounts are cheaper, but this in turn excludes other users. It also might not sit well with shareholders who care about profitability.
If all 10 million Bluesky users paid £5 a month to the platform, it would currently generate £60 million a year. That's not even close to X's revenue of $300m (£230m) in 2012.
Real change
People switching to a new social media platform want the assurance that it won't turn into another X. Organizations and individuals with large followings may also be reluctant to invest time in new platforms if they still have value from the old ones. Of course there are big mainstream alternatives: Instagram, Facebook and TikTok, but Twitter offered something different.
Real change could occur when the organizations leaving X because of the way it was run reach a critical mass, although what that threshold represents is questionable. Those who work in academia are cautious and play it safe at best, as I have found in my own research.
As X becomes less and less successful in dealing with misinformation, it finds itself even more exposed to the same headwinds as right-wing platforms like Truth Social. The newer platforms may be a safer haven for now, but that is likely to change unless lessons are learned around ownership, funding and moderation.
Andy Tattersall, Information Specialist, University of Sheffield
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Comments are closed.