X, which bills itself as the social network of freedom of expression, is slowly declining. It wasn’t a very friendly social network, so to speak, before Elon Musk came along, but Twitter (now X) seems to have gotten worse since the tycoon bought it. Hoaxes, misinformation, hateful content, zero moderation, an algorithmic feed focused on controversial topics and content aimed at creating interactions (in the name of monetization) and bots (which will disappear upon verified payment) are proliferating and increasingly so. fee.

What happened? Although the difference is intriguing, users leave the platform. On the one hand, well-known media outlets such as The Guardian or La Vanguardia have confirmed that they will stop actively publishing on X, and this already tells us something. The reason they explained from The Guardian is that “X is a toxic media platform.” From La Vanguardia, they state that X “has become a platform where conspiracy theories and misinformation resonate.”

On the other hand, they claim that they broke usage records during the United States elections with 942 million streams from X. Elon Musk said in May that X had more than 600 million monthly active users and half of them used the platform daily. But there is no way to verify this data, but in any case there is a certain contrast: Users leave the platform, and alternatives do not stop growing, but everything seems to be fine with X.

Because? Because in addition to making questionable decisions like rendering blocks useless, X also has a feed whose algorithm supports questionable content. Beyond memes and viral videos whose sole purpose is to make money through Twitter Premium, the algorithm will be able to detect hate content, racism, conspiracy theories, cryptocurrency scams, AI-generated content, etc. He seems to have no problem encouraging it. The experience is far from what it was in the past.

Alternatives are increasing. Every time Elon Musk/X touches something, bread, or rather the number of users of these alternatives, increases. Bluesky’s case is remarkable. Temporary closure of registered users. That’s a far cry from the 600 million figure Musk claimed the X had, but it’s a much higher figure than just a few months ago.

Bluesky Statistics. A good metric is “unique posters,” i.e., accounts posted daily. The change in these two years was beyond curiosity | Capture: Xataka

And then there are Topics whose statistics are not publicly available. What we do know is that it managed to reach 100 million users in just a few days and currently the number of registered users exceeds 275 million. According to The Information, the social network appears to be doing well to the point that Meta is preparing to make money through advertising. This was something that would happen sooner or later.

Mastodon Statistics. You can see the growth as well as the recession in the last two years | Image: Xataka

Mastodon has two major growth peaks: Elon Musk’s acquisition and the summer 2023 decline. But Mastodon, which has nearly nine million users and nearly one million active users, isn’t growing. It maintains its numbers, but the graph does not appear to be moving upwards.

problem of understanding. The nice thing about X is that all users are in the same place: X. If your friend is on X, you can find them, follow them, and get them to follow you. Now the pie starts being shared with users on Threads, other users on Bluesky, other users on Mastodon, and things get complicated. And it does this because Threads and Mastodon defend the federated universe and the ActivityPub protocol, while Bluesky sticks to the AT Protocol.

They are different and Bluesky, to all intents and purposes, does not get along with Threads and Mastodon. There are third-party tools to connect Bluesky to federal, but these are just third-party tools.

But this gives us an idea of ​​where things are heading: platforms with different names, functions and options, but connected via open protocols to create a true digital plaza. Restriction will undoubtedly be a challenge, but no one said countering X and its CEO, the richest person in the world, would be easy.

Pictures | Xataka

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