Threads are thriving, and Twitter/X is dying. This gave me a flashback, remembering what had happened to MySpace. MySpace was founded on August 1, 2003, by Thomas Anderson, who you know as MySpace Tom. MySpace was a giant and number one social media until Justin Timberlake and Specific Media LLC jointly acquired MySpace for about 35 million dollars. From there, it went downhill FAST; Facebook was founded on February 4, 2004, by Mark Zuckerberg as Thefacebook, then a year later, in 2005, it was changed to simply Facebook, then stole the crown from MySpace as the largest social media a few years later. Now, Facebook as a social media is so large that no social media probably can ever take it from Facebook for a very long time – that’s if they ever do! Now, with Threads and Twitter/X, that is giving me a deja vu! Back then, the largest photo-sharing service was Flickr, and then Instagram swooped in, taking the crown from Flickr as the largest photo-sharing service. Instagram is owned by who? Meta, under which Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook due to having many companies, so he founded Meta as a parent company for Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and others. Twitter, one of the large micro-blogging (part of social media) companies, was acquired by Elon Musk for 44 billion (yes, billion, not million!) not too long ago from Jack Dorsey, who founded Twitter.
After the acquisition, Twitter quickly started going downhill and formed chaos because of the new owner of Twitter Elon Musk. Elon Musk laid off many employees at Twitter, their development and tech team, which resulted in Twitter struggling to keep up on the technical side and also shutting down the accessibility team that was responsible for making sure that Twitter is accessible for Deaf users and blind users. Not only that, Elon Musk started unbanning many racist, misogynist, homophobic, sexist, and other users on Twitter. That fits in with Elon Musk’s personality because he spews a lot of bad things on Twitter. His excuse is that all these sayings from banned users and himself are freedom of speech and expression.
One of his goals with Twitter was to ensure that there was no censorship on people’s freedom to speak and express however they wanted. He was applying the First Amendment of the United States Constitution to Twitter. But the problem is that he doesn’t realize that there is unprotected freedom of speech (restrictions on freedom of speech) – obscenity, child pornography, defamatory speech, false advertising, true threats, and fighting words. Besides, the First Amendment protects the citizens’ freedom of speech and expression, meaning the government. Here’s an excerpt from the United States freedom of speech exceptions on Wikipedia:
Here’s the link where I copied and pasted a part from Wikipedia, which I recommend a read, as it has more in-depth details about these: United States Freedom of Speech Exceptions on Wikipedia.
The behavior of Elon Musk has turned off many people. Twitter has become his sandbox basically, as he has changed the name of Twitter to X. Elon Musk had a business and domain name called X.com when he co-founded a payment processing service everyone knows now – PayPal. Before PayPal, that was X.com. Although Elon Musk no longer owns PayPal, as he sold it long ago, he still owns the original name X.com. Fast-forward to a couple of months ago, he decided to change the name of Twitter to X, which was initially created for PayPal. When he changed the name of Twitter to X, it received mixed feelings from the users, but I wouldn’t say I liked it. Twitter makes more sense than X because Twitter is the place we would go to for information and sharing information. Just like the birds would, they gather to receive and share information by tweeting, which is why on Twitter, when we post anything, there is called a “tweet”. Now that it has changed to X, how does that work for a platform like that? We xeeing, or xeeting or whatever on X. That doesn’t sound right. Our tweets on Twitter (now X) are now called posts, and our retweets are now called reposts. Still, we post on X or repost on X, which still does not sound right! Even worse, when the name Twitter was changed to X on that day, for a few days, it was flooded with pornography, and I thought to myself – obvious! Why I thought that? Because there are many pornography websites, movies, videos, and whatnot are called X.
All of these, how he behaves or says, and how he did with Twitter, such as firing many employees, changing the rules, and adding or removing some features, including the idea to charge the users to use Twitter now, is called X. Limiting how many tweets, I mean posts that the users who don’t pay for a subscription (called platinum X, formerly Twitter Blue) can see. Last time I checked, these users who don’t have subscriptions can only read 2,400 posts per day; if they exceed that, they would be notified that they have exceeded their limits. That isn’t all; their DMs (messages) are also limited; they can only send/read 500 messages daily, and they can only follow or get 400 followers per day. Don’t believe me? Please feel free to read their About X Limits page! If Elon Musk or someone over at X sees this and decides to change the URL or do anything to that page – read it here (PDF). Now, just not too long ago, Elon Musk decided to make it so that anyone who isn’t verified or has a Platinum X subscription cannot leave a comment on any posts made by verified users. Yes, that means that if I post something on Twitter/X because where I am verified, and you are not, you cannot leave a comment or reply to that post I made. After all, that post was made by a verified user such as me. All Elon Musk is hammering as many nails as he can on the coffin of Twitter/X. This is why Threads, a new social media under Meta, which also owns Facebook, has a surge of people from Twitter/X. I don’t think that Elon Musk thinks this through because the more damage he does, the more users he sends to Threads. Talk about giving a competitor an easy win. I am on both of them, Twitter/X and Threads. I notice that I hardly have any engagements on Twitter/X, and I am gaining a lot of engagements on Threads.
Twitter/X is truly dying. You can give thanks to Elon Musk for all of the reasons that Twitter/X is dying. Elon Musk is doing everything he can to make it profitable, such as the Platinum X subscription, pushing them to pay for it or they cannot use Twitter/X. They are not allowing anyone who does not have a Platinum X subscription, which verifies them, to leave a comment on a post made by a verified user with a Platinum X subscription. In doing that, it is an effort to get these users to pay for a Platinum X subscription so that they can finally have the ability to leave a comment on the posts that verified users made. So, Elon Musk is pushing Twitter/X toward becoming a social media that is no longer free. Because Elon Musk enforces that anyone who isn’t verified cannot leave a comment under a verified user’s post, all they can do is look at the posts but cannot do anything. With everything going on at Twitter/X, advertisers are no longer paying for ads because what would be the point of doing so if they are losing users left and right? Not only that, the advertisers would not want to have to do anything with Twitter/X because of how Elon Musk behaves, and they know that paying for advertisements on Twitter/X would mean enabling Elon Musk’s behaviors. Advertisers know that if they do, they will embarrass themselves and risk losing their customers if seen as enabling Elon Musk’s behaviors. Losing advertisers also means a huge loss of revenue for Twitter/X. That is one of the reasons that Elon Musk is focusing on Platinum X subscriptions, trying to find a way to encourage the users to pay for the Platinum X subscriptions and whatnot to make up for the loss of revenue where the advertisers are no longer paying for advertisements on the Twitter/X platform.
As I write this, just recently, Elon Musk has been saying that there is a possibility that they would start charging the users a dollar to be able to tweet or reply. Even paying a dollar per month, there would still be a limitation on how many you can tweet (post), retweet (repost), and DM. To have that lifted, you must pay a Platinum X subscription for $8.99 through a website or $11.99 through the App Store. If that isn’t the last nail in the coffin, I don’t know how many more holes a coffin has left to be nailed! Twitter/X is no longer free, which I just expected, and because of that, I am sure many more people will be leaving Twitter/X, which means more revenue that Elon Musk will be losing.
Many people realize that, as many of them are leaving Twitter/X and starting to use Threads more. Lately, Threads is much more friendly than it is on Twitter/X, and many users on Threads say they are getting a ton of engagements that they never had on Twitter/X. I agree with these people on Threads because, as I said above, I am getting many more engagements on Threads than on Twitter/X. Even though I am verified on Twitter/X, I have subscribed to Platinum X for a few months now, and having a verified account supposedly means that many people would see me before any users who aren’t verified. Yet, I am getting all kinds of engagements on Threads and hardly any on Twitter/X, which tells you that Twitter/X is truly dying.
Moreover, Threads doesn’t charge us for anything, including the ability to edit our threads (posts) and whatnot. It’s no wonder Threads are having a surge from Twitter/X as many people are going to Threads from Twitter/X, and Threads are growing fast. Threads is the next Twitter. And the Twitter that we know is becoming no longer what it once was. I bid Twitter goodbye and hello to Threads! You should do the same because, eventually, you would be going to Threads anyway, so why not do it now? You can follow me on Threads: https://threads.net/@JoshiesWorld. You can go to Threads.net, a web version of Threads, or download the Threads app on iOS or Android.
Elon Musk is THE reason that Twitter/X is dying and will be THE reason that Twitter/X will be no longer around.
Joshua “Joshie” Sullivan.
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