You’re telling me the company that once had ads for T-Mobile and Volkswagen and now almost exclusively has ads where random bots with NFT photos advertise ChatGPT ‘services’ isn’t doing well financially??
What the fuck is the other 70%'s problem?
They’re bots
Or right-wing fascists
Or people with morbid curiousity like me who hop on to see the dumpster fire occasionally. Can’t say I recommend it.
Damn, I thought it was a requirement to shit post on Twitter while you’re shitty code compiles. How am I supposed to become a real programmer now? I guess I still got mastodon.
He kept the 70% he wanted, it’ll be a propaganda engine and communications platform for the right wing.
Whatever wing willing to pay, honestly.
EDIT: I rarely see the voting system of lemmy for a reason. I find it cute, this reaction to the mere comparison between so-called “wings” in the American political system. Both, republicans and democrats, are two sides of the same coin.
Strategic alignment. Getting his taxes cut counts. Of course, could be some deeper conspiracy. I’m not so anto- conspiracy that I don’t think people aren’t making grand plans to install trump.
I have a lot of friends that won’t quit because of sports updates and all the shitposts
This is in addition to the first year of losses, which are likely higher.
There are a lot of quasi-celebrity types with a big following that don’t want to give up their follower base.
Sunken cost fallacy
My problem is that I never had a Twitter account to stop using it lmao.
How much did human usage drop? Because there are a shitload more bots on twitter nowadays than there were in the years before he took over.
This should be human usage - the user survey was done by phone.
Ah, ok, 27% -> 19%, an 8% YoY drop, and the numbers were obtained using identical methodologies across multiple years. Yeah, I agree, seems to check out.
Still, there are definitely a shitload more bots than there were before.
Are there more bots or does it just seem that way because there are fewer people? I don’t ask to be snarky, I’m legitimately curious what the numbers were and are.
X seems to have stopped fighting against bots. So there are less people, more bots and those bots won’t be banned as quickly as before.
Any time something gets too big it gets bots. Lemmy will be the same. We will see instances getting defederated who cannot manage the spam.
Fuck Elon though
If people set up their own instances with 100% LLM bots how would we even know they are bots to defederate? The AIs are too realistic. Only giveaway would be the ones dumb enough to make accounts post/comment 24/7 with seconds between each comment.
I imagine the content would be bad, which is the whole reason an instance would become defederated.
Any time something gets too big it gets bots
Dead internet theory, summed up in a sentence
Wasn’t like one of his focuses going to be getting rid of bots? Did they just not do anything and the bots just invaded or did the bots just get better?
He got rid of like 80% of the staff. I doubt he has a functional team who can even tackle the problem.
I think the focus on bots was primarily used in an attempt to back out of the deal. It was never an issue, especially if it inflated his ego by pumping up his account.
Ever since Musk’s control of the company, Twitter (I refused to call it X) showed me multiple hate and racists posts. Basically, Twitter is showing me garbage. I now use Mastadon instead.
I was never active in terms of posting but I followed several news outlets, local government agencies, and a few friends. Shortly after Musk took over I saw nothing but right wing nutjobs and a lot of posts from Musk. I tried unfollowing but nothing worked so I quit logging in. I need to cancel my account but haven’t taken the time.
Yeah, I had a Twitter account but rarely used it. Shortly after Musk took over, his account was in recommendations and his tweets were in my feed, even though I’d NEVER seen them before.
I blocked him.
He remained at the top of my recommendations.
I think I even occasionally saw his posts when they were retweeted or something by someone I didn’t even follow, because the retweet was trending, I guess?
That’s when I deleted my account.
It’s a shame because Twitter is a perfect platform for the kind of one-way communications required by a news agency or local government agency. Maybe Mastodon or Bluesky will fill that void.
I would prefer RSS.
So would I but good luck getting your average local sheriff or office of emergency preparedness to use RSS. Most of their “IT” staff is the deputy who is “good with computers” meaning they can open a PDF file.
Mastodon has been great.
Are there enough using it?
Facebook does that for me too, alongside flat earthers, anti EV crap and the occasional funny picture. It’s depressing.
Oh yeah, the flat earthers, the pictures with lens flare on it being proof of “planet X” and other insanity? The best comedy I’ve ever seen.
Needing to log in to view someones tweets means now I wont even visit the site when linked. Kinda the number 1 rule of platforms is to make them accessible to those that don’t already use it, so as to convert them later. Musk, and everyone around him letting these decisions run through, are idiots
ran into this last night.
I hate twitter, but there was something I was trying to see and the only way to get the info was from a twitter post. Couldnt view the goddamn twitter post without creating an account and logging in.
My immediate thought was “This isnt important enough for this bullshit” and immediately gave up.
I’m convinced this login to view shit is to hide the explosion of right wing white supremacy/racism/etc posts and the bots echoing and amplifying it from people before they commit themselves to an account.
Login to view started before Musk took over, FYI. I distinctly remember avoiding Twitter to spite them in those days.
Did it? I never had problem grabbing info off it before Musk.
It did. I don’t remember when, but Twitter was getting hard and harder to access without an account before Musk. It might have been one of those Rolling Release things so everyone didn’t notice at once or something.
In the beginning, Twitter even had an RSS feed for accounts you could subscribe to. When it shifted to nagging be for login, I installed a nitter addon and that that’s broken, I haven’t been there since.
I’m back to calling it Twitter. (Not that I’m ever on it though.)
It’s such a stupid name! Everytime it’s mentioned, it has to be prepend or suffixed with something so people actually understand the “X” context.
And more importantly - If you visit x.com, it redirects to twitter.com! So what’s the fucking point of the rebrand?
Genius, i say! The man’s an absolute genius!
Obviously. Some people say trump should run a social media platform. More and more.
Until he stops allowing deadnaming on his site, I’m going to deadname his site.
It’s only fair.
Xitter, but the X makes a ‘sh’ sound.
I haven’t stopped calling it twatter
Xwitter (zwitter)
Xchan
Szechuan
What do people call a tweet in the X rebranding?
Xcrement
I’ve seen “xeet” from people outside of Twitter. Not sure what an X person would say. It’s pronounced “shit” or “sheet”.
😂
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i heard there’s good porn on there, probably why some decided to stick around
Quite a few Tumblr refugees still I’d imagine. Shame mastodon and Lemmy weren’t ready yet back then.
Also twitter is still one of the biggest platforms for sharing art in general, if you want the large audience, you kinda have to be there.
will never be zero accounts
at the end it will just be bots crossposting bots and replying to bots.
I wrote this right as the first elon buying Twitter mentions were popping up…
Notably, Twitter facilitated communication during the arab spring, where the people organized to stand against and even overthrow several broken and corrupt government regimes throughout the middle east - including some participation in places like Saudi Arabia, for example.
Twitter’s second largest investor after a musk takeover… the kingdom of Saudi Arabia and it’s de facto leader who, among other things, killed and dismembered an American journalist without consequence somewhat recently.
And now Twitter is about to be killed… and dismembered.
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How the fuck is that all?
Bots on bots on bots.
This article is a survey of Americans, not a computerized search.
Unless a number of bots answered the telephone survey, I think the stats here are legit.
I’m sure a lot of the original population has dropped by a lot more than that, but in numbers they would have been replaced by an influx of fascists and bots.
How could the jews do this to me :(
-Musk
I deleted my account and haven’t missed it at all. Then again I was never good at making use of Twitter, it’s too hectic and disorganized for me, and I have the same problem with mastodon.
I’m glad I’m not the only person that doesn’t really understand the whole Thing behind Twitter / Mastodon feed thing.
That sounds like bragging. Why aren’t more people stopping this crap?
Who the fuck is still on that shitpile? Dudes. Stahp.
How do you measure the percentage of people who never used it and are now saying “Oh hell no, not ever!”?
Doesn’t surprise me. Musk has cultivated and emboldened racists, homophobes, cryptobros, misogynists, and the far right and the platform has turned into a cesspit. Meanwhile scammers & bots run rampant and the blueticks stink up every thread with cretinous remarks and trolling.
I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of people have just given up with it, or moved to another social media that isn’t so toxic.
I feel the same way. I’m only ever on to check for updates on certain companies and games I follow. I wish they would adopt anything else.