Comment by Hoasi
3 days ago
X has been nothing short of an exercise in brand destruction. However, despite all the drama, it still stands, it still exists, and it remains relevant.
3 days ago
X has been nothing short of an exercise in brand destruction. However, despite all the drama, it still stands, it still exists, and it remains relevant.
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.
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.
Most people were betting on X going under in some way or another within a year. From that POV, it's survival in itself can be seen a success for Musk.
I'm genuinely surprised at the amount of people that stuck to it.
97 replies →
> It makes X an increasingly niche website.
I did not use Twitter. I do not use X. I'm even less inclined to become a user after the Musk takeover. I don't even know anyone who is active on X. However, I still constantly get linked to tweets and see screenshots of tweets (or whatever they're called now). And I never see anything from competing platforms.
X may be failing by many metrics, but in terms of popularity it is still the undisputed king of its market. It's by no means "niche".
2 replies →
> 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.
Thanks for putting this into words — I have also noticed this and felt that product decisions have been shaped by this force of institutional rot.
Twitter's back-end is written in Scala, but they used "better Java" style so an average developer should have no problems making changes
Anyway, what kind of features Twitter (or any social network for that matter) needs after it existed for so many years? Hacker News haven't changed a bit a it does what it does perfectly well
14 replies →
There an argument that he paid $44B to get a Us administration that would hugely advantage him and his companies. Certainly he’s made billions from contracts initiated by this administration and seen many regulatory difficulties removed.
Of course it may all fall apart because everyone involved has the temperament of a five year old on a meth bender, but the basic “buy media to influence politics to multiply wealth” approach seems to have worked well.
3 replies →
Unfortunately, Bluesky has not taken off. The network effects of Twitter are too great to lose its journalists & public figures.
What has happened instead is that we're back on Facebook. Errm... Threads by Instagram by Meta née Facebook. And it's reached a stage where public figure migration is actually becoming feasible.
https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/07/threads-is-nearing-xs-dail...
Network effected spaces front-loaded by the power of Mark Zuckerberg, third richest person in the world, stand a chance.
11 replies →
3. Didn’t go well? I don’t remember twitter (x) crashing for days or data erased. Means that organizations don’t need that many people. One thing I learned from this is to not trust so called “experts” or loud voices.
10 replies →
Can confirm the frontend piece - there is previously available functionality that was removed from the ui that you can still access via the web api
From my perspective personal perspective, that whole category of social media has been destroyed. Pretty much no one I know/followed still posts. It’s gone from something I watched/posted very frequently to something I might glance at once in a very great while. And after initial flurries of interest neither Mastodon or Bluesky really achieved critical mass.
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.
6 replies →
I’m pretty lazy about curating my feed, but I do a little. And I never see any porn bots and only rarely any spam accounts. Political stuff, yes, but I don’t mind and it’s not a ton, in fact my feed has a lot more insightful analysis than advocacy. I still get a lot of “breaking news” that I’d otherwise have to be very active on Facebook to get, especially regarding other countries.
I guess that’s just TL;DR: YMMV, but I do think there are a lot of people on X who find it very useful and don’t run into the problems you listed.
As for Elon’s overpayment, I have thought about actually paying for an account, which I never would have done on Old Twitter.
This msy surprise you, but the average person doesn't even know who owns what tech platform. Not Meta or X or Google. They don't care either.
Most don't even know Musk bought Twitter.
To complete this thought, most users of X are siloed too. There is no "capture" of the platform, whatever thst means, for them.
I agree that in some circles there may be brand damage,
X exists in other languages than english. it provides insight into non-english speaking places that other platforms owned by elon musk do not.
> where the news happens
It never was, despite what lazy journalists led people to believe.
He did not make X "everything app" but X is still somehow still working, functioning, and somehow adding new features, even if they suck.
Also it made him win an election.
1. Agreed. One of the worst timed purchases of all time.
2. Unfortunately, nothing has truly displaced Twitter. Is Meta even still trying with Threads? I don't see ads, but I have to wonder why any real company would risk advertising on Twitter.
3. Eh. As a casual user, I haven't noticed any difference. For a mostly finished product, there were probably were a bunch of overpaid do-nothings on staff.
4. TSLA stock price seems impervious to reality.
[dead]
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.
> 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!
3 replies →
>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.
This is far more nuanced (and disputed) than you make it out to be.
> It happened accidentally (ie against the wishes of Twitter management) in 2016
I think the whole Cambridge Analytica fiasco played a bigger role, and I don't think they utilize Twitter. On top of that, frankly, TV and his behavior at rallies/debated helped him a lot more than Twitter did in 2016. I don't know a single MAGA supporter who was even on Twitter in 2016.
> they successfully suppressed him in 2020
How? He was banned after the election.
> and then Elon gave MAGA that platform in 2024, leading to DJT's successful election.
DJT was not on Twitter in 2024. Did it really make a difference when he had his own social network? We all have our opinions, but is there actual data supporting this for the 2024 election?
26 replies →
> Twitter/X is the reason DJT became President.
I really don't think so, at least not in isolation. It probably contributed a small part but the right wing media machine is multi-faceted. There were a lot of podcasters (i.e. Joe Rogan), comedians and youtubers all publicly in support of a second DJT presidency and I think that had a much bigger factor overall than Twitter.
9 replies →
This is maybe true for 2016. In 2020 and 2024 Trump/Biden/Harris were just part of larger trends that saw Western incumbents worldwide lose their seats.
As a thought experiment, do you think X would have made the difference if Nikki Haley or Ron DeSantis were the GOP nominee? I would bet either people think X couldn't have helped enough (candidates didn't have the rizz) and ultimately they'd have lost, or they wouldn't be as toxic as Trump and wouldn't need whatever theoretical help X would provide.
Or if you like stats, Harris broadly lost on all social media platforms [0].
Years ago now I predicted Musk would burn through Twitter's attention capital and it'd become less and less relevant over time. I think that's happening: all the stats I can look up show declining users, usage, and revenue. A lot of people use X as "write only" now, or have very sporadic interactive use.
Another way of saying this is Musk bought the peak, and is running this new Nazi-friendly version as a short position against American democracy. The only way he gains attentional or financial capital from that position is if something even more illiberal happens to society and this far-right version of X is suddenly as relevant as center-left Twitter was in 2016, like Nick Fuentes becomes president or something.
[0]: https://navigatorresearch.org/2024-post-election-survey-a-ma...
If you think twitter made even 1% difference in 2016 I urge you to go and touch some grass. This stuff doesn't matter.
8 replies →
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.
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.
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
[1]:https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/12/the-xai-x-merger-is-a-good...
[2]:https://www.reuters.com/technology/elon-musk-says-xai-will-u...
[3]:https://digiday.com/marketing/with-600-million-users-xs-lind...
[4]:https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/07/x-formerly-twitter-becomes...
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.
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.
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.
Do you consider massive reduction of impression/reacheability and "shadowbans" for organically influential users features? Lots of users are seen reporting those. Tweets and replies not showing or made "unavailable", followers silently deleted or muted without user input, etc.
Long tweets: 2017 (https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/07/twitter-officially-expands...)
Subscriptions: 2021 (https://www.reuters.com/technology/twitter-launches-subscrip...)
Community Notes: 2021 (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/Periscope_(service) / https://www.videonuze.com/article/twitter-unveils-30-second-...)
Musk buys Twitter: late 2022.
That leaves… Grok.
10 replies →
From your list, only grok. All the other stuff was already there.
As a medicore programmer, other than AI I would imagine the rest of the list would take 2 weeks to program and implement.
3 replies →
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.
Make a Mastodon account and post to both places simultaneously. They say Mastodon brings real discussions and engagement.
I think it’s hard to conclude that the people weren’t needed given how spectacularly it tanked.
Has it tanked? X is still running, it still has millions of users.
37 replies →
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.
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.
8 replies →
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)
Honestly I really don't think a bad release of an LLM that was rolled back is really the condemnation you think it is.
28 replies →
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
Estimates are that its revenue has decreased by half. Even if Musk decreased operating expenses enough to keep or even increase profits, a 50% drop in revenue is not at all a good sign for the health of business.
1 reply →
Thriving? Its valuation has tanked since his purchase and last I read they’re still actively losing users.
5 replies →
It successfully served its purpose: gave us Trump.
[dead]
Which really says a lot about how hard it is to leave platforms. The network effect is hard to overcome.
I just think that apps / social networks / whatever are usually not replaced by a copy of the same thing.
Google+ didn't replace Facebook, Signal didn't replace Whatsapp, Bluesky won't replace Twitter.
Which reinforces the concept of a digital fiefdom; the owners of said platforms have this immense power only because they were the first to implement their ideas during the internet boom.
And now we're stuck with Zuckerberg, Musk and Bezos. Out of all people, the last ones I would choose to have unelected power. Okay maybe the last one would be Joe Rogan.
Sir, I've seen whom you _elected_, let's be humble here about preferred choices
5 replies →
There's no technical reason that one couldn't move from platform to platform and link identities - the restrictions around IP and platform lock-in only benefit the platform owner, ensuring that competition will be stifled rather than the platform made useful for its users.
The sad part is that ad networks know more about our connections across platforms than we're allowed to.
There is also no technical reason people have to stay, because tech isn't the problem here. The value in these platforms aren't in the range of features they provide, but the engagement between individuals and the community and the value of the information it generates.
how do you move platform when you have >10k followers on twitter?
And I blame the media. Politicians continue to post, and the media continue to quote them from twitter. I think it's shameful that politicians and other officials are using twitter as some sort of official media/announcement platform.
In my own African country twitter has become the de-facto channel for various updates and announcements by various state organs and officials. Makes it even worse when you consider the majority of the population has no reliable way to access this information.
And now its locked behind a user account! And it's owned by a potentially rival politician!
I've been able to access posts for a while now without logging in, I think that might have changed when they got rid of blocking.
It's usually possible to access a single post if it's directly linked, but not possible to go to the profile from there, or access other tweets or relevant discussions about the post you have open.
That's my experience anyway.
I feel like I need to shower every time I end up there. The place is repulsive to me.
Tesla itself seems primed for a similar fate at an even greater magnitude -- the bigger they are, the harder they fall.
X collects data in all the places Teslas don't get sold. That is why it continues to remain of value. It is an intelligence generating engine for places that otherwise have very little.
I was following fintwit quite a lot at a time, and some accounts already moved to Bluesky some time ago. I'm periodically checking via nitter, and 90% of answers are spam at this point.
It will take some time for complete destruction, but the path is quite clear.
Let's be honest, there is no real alternative.
"Not using it." is a completely acceptable alternative. It does not actually solve a problem in one's life.
Definitely.
RSS is still great for news and Signal/Telegram/Whatsapp are more than enough to keep connected with friends&family.
What's wrong with Bluesky?
Bluesky is not a real decentralized system as the company behind it say. Bluesky (the company) controls most key parts of the network, and it is basically impossible to setup a really decentralised alternative provider for the ATProto network, like you can do today with ActivityPub (Mastodon) or Nostr.
Sure, you can setup you PDS and own your data, but it is useless without the Relays and a self-hosted Firehose, and running you own website is basically impossible.
And lastly, let's keep in mind that BSky is a commercial entity, not a no-profit like Mastodon or a commmunity effort like Nostr.
And yes, I am ignoring the political toxicity of the network because I think the technical aspects are bad enough.
1 reply →
It's irrelevant, no body uses it
And most people, me included, still call it Twitter.
That’s because it’s not really brand destruction so much as normalizing the support for fascism by a brand.
> and it remains relevant.
Which I find truely shocking. Who in their right mind still wants to support such a platform (except for Elon's target audience, of course)? Just don't use the damn thing. (I have never used Twitter I the first place and I don't think I've been missing out.)
It's the horror of two-sided markets. You could probably turn off the DNS and unplug the server it would keep running somehow.
I certainly wouldn't call it brand destruction, a lot of people returned to X and while the branding has changed, I certainly wouldn't call it brand destruction
They had managed to get a verb into relatively common speech and their revenue has collapsed since the Musk take over I'd say it's pretty thoroughly destroyed.
I find this X doomsday talk is pretty isolated to reddit/other minor social media sites. The site itself is doing fine, and maintains a strong investor/startup ecosystem, with a slight fall in usage after the election (which isn't uncommon for Twitter/X). My understanding is that a few advertisers threatened to leave and then returned after a few days/weeks.
It's a private company now so I don't know what their revenue looks like but they certainly don't seem to be low on cash given how much they've invested in AI. You may not use X but it's definitely not "destroyed" lol
6 replies →
Does it? It is 100% a bot farm full of right-wing propaganda. Create a new account and start tweeting. Every single like/reply you get will be from a bot pretending to be either Elon, or Elon's mom, or someone who has recently won the lottery and is going to give it away to all of their followers. Every single recommended post you'll get in your feed will be the most unhinged q-anon conspiracy shit you can imagine. There is zero discourse happening there. It is an echo chamber of psychotic individuals.
Threads on the other hand is actually a pretty fun place to be these days. I get a lot of interaction with random strangers on all kinds of topics, and it is as good or bad as you want it to be.
I’ve only been on twitter for a year and at the start my algo feed was full of awful crap, but after I followed a few good accounts I mostly now just get AI focussed tech stuff. I think your experience isn’t universal.
Relevant to who? My employers marketing has stopped using X and posts now on LinkedIn exclusively (we do B2B software).
My partners workplace does consumer marketing and only TikTok (for young people) and Facebook (for old people) are truly relevant anymore. If a customer has lots of money to waste, they'll also do Instagram and YouTube.
There is not a single place on the internet that comes close to providing up to the minute news and updates. X was the only place one could monitor the Israel / Iran conflict in almost real time. Same for a variety of other events. There is nothing else like it. Its the only place where anyone can have interactions with politicians, scientists, CEOs, etc.
It is the only place that covers and provides a wide variety of information that traditional media does not. Almost no media companies reported that a dozen domestic terrorists ambushed ICE officers and shot one in the neck this past week. As far as I know, none reported on the Minnesota Department of Human Services requiring that hiring managers must provide a hiring justification to hire a white man. Violation of that policy results in termination. So state sponsored racism in the state of the governor that would have been our VP.
Its the only place you can get a picture of what's going on. There is of course mountains of lies you have to filter through, no doubt spurred on by the monetization of X for posters.
For all its faults and madness (Grok going full mecha-hitler was wild) there is no where else like it. Side note, the day after mecha-hitler xAi released Grok4 which appears to be the most powerful model to date on some tests, beating o3, Gemini 2.5 Pro and Anthropic Claude 4 Opus.
There is a non zero chance that xAi, which is part of the same company that holds X wins the AI race
[flagged]
..and 3 years later has a combined valuation with xAI of $113B.
Those waiting for X to collapse are going to wait a lot longer than the original 6 months that it was predicted to collapse after the November 2022 takeover.
>..and 3 years later has a combined valuation with xAI of $113B.
This might be like Stacey King, a Chicago Bulls player, jokingly claiming he and Michael Jordan "combined to score 70 points" on a night when Jordan scored 69 points
"Dinesh, don't fall for his “aw, shucks" routine. He is a shrewd businessman, and together, we have over $20,036,000 at our disposal"
But Twitter/X owns that training data. Tesla (or whatever else you’re trying to say is Stacey King) does not.
> ..and 3 years later has a combined valuation with xAI of $113B.
Haha...ok. I gave a bunch of stock from one of my companies to another one of my companies and made up a value during the transaction.
xAI tried to raise $20 billion in equity in April but wound up with only $5 billion & had to issue $5 billion in junk bonds last week. You can value yourself $44 billion but the market doesn’t think it’s anywhere close
I will admit that I was surprised and agree it was a clever move to extend his runway, but it relies on xAI being able to make huge amounts of profit eventually. Twitter/X’s brand value has declined so much and xAI has such a ridiculous cash burn and it really looks to me like he’s just delayed the inevitable by a bit by combining them…
To misquote an adage: Elon Musk can stay irrational longer than I can stay solvent.
Does it count as irrational if he can get a puppet President elected, have his child mock that person publically while he's present, and repeatedly urge the trusted AI authority he presents for people's use into opinionizing on Boers and Mecha-Hitler?
It sounds like he is getting exactly what he wants. That's the most rational thing about him in what's otherwise a storm of ketamine. I think all the other stuff he thinks is flat-out insane, but exploiting X and pushing it as hard as he can, that's about as rational and effective as Elon ever gets.
Was pretty effective using as a propaganda tool to get a candidate of the owner's choice elected. I don't see any reason to assume that wasn't the intended goal from the beginning. No reason to assume that won't be how it is used in the future.
Twitter's brand was quite stained before Elon took over, so this is really a case of "continuing the brand destruction"
But really, the brand doesn't matter if you can't keep the lights on. If Elon has managed to make X profitable, it is more successful than Twitter likely would ever have been.
X is still ground zero for news, and it saved free speech. In the fullness of time and distance it will be viewed by historians as one of the most important events in history.
Your post gets shadow banned for the word cisgender on X... the only speech it saved was low effort trolling, misinformation and hate speech. Musk's version of free speech is just changing the dials on the moderation machines to boost speech he prefers and shadow ban speech his doesn't.
Oh for sure, it's so important we should restart the count of years to mark the significance. 2022 will be year 1, the rest 'Anno X'
Legitimately can't tell if this is sarcasm or not. Saved free speech??
[flagged]
4 replies →
Yes, it did. Every large platform including Twitter was censoring its users due to state pressure. Even Facebook has since admitted that they were told to censor information that was true, and they knew to be true.
12 replies →
X saved free speech online. Without Musk acquiring it, we would have continued to slip into this franken-Resetera level of discourse. Thank God!
X is the platform where everyone can speak as long as it doesn't break the law. That's fantastic. If you don't like a particular subject, you can just move on. That's what the internet was in the 2000s!
He said he would reinstate freedom of speech, but did he actually? [1][2][3][4]
[1] https://www.newsweek.com/elon-musk-promised-free-speech-twit...
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/15/elon-m...
[3] https://www.thefire.org/news/twitter-no-free-speech-haven-un...
[4] https://gizmodo.com/10-times-elon-musk-censored-twitter-user...
> everyone can speak as long as it doesn't break the law
I have one word for you: "cisgender".
https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/x-cisgender-slur-cis-elon...
> “You may not directly attack other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, caste, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease,”
How does this make it different than other website's policies in terms of free speech?
2 replies →
Saved?
Seems like it harmed the migration to more free protocol oriented services. One company controlling the algorithm and API to a global conversation. Verified badges getting ranked priority in replies and For You. A DM function that barely functions. Private chats as a promise instead of cryptographic guarantee?
>free protocol oriented services.
Love all of these on paper, I think any tech person would. But they are non-starters. Normies have zero chance of ever deciding to use these.
1 reply →
what speech specifically did it save?
[dead]