Since Elon Musk took the reins at Twitter or X or whatever the hell you want to call it about a year ago, the company has hemorrhaged users and advertisers, according to new data. Talk a little bit about why that is, but first, let's dig into the numbers. First, app downloads have plummeted from around 16 million in [00:00:18] January 2022 to 10 million in the fall of 2023. Yes, 6 million. It has decreased. And I'll say this graph is a little misleading because it makes it look like it goes down to zero, but that bottom number is 10 million. Still a significant and sharp decrease. [00:00:36] But the important things to note is obviously super sharp decline in the past year and a half. So let's get into some reporting from Axios. App downloads fell roughly 38% globally between October 2022 and September 2023, according to Sensor Tower estimates. [00:00:52] In the United States, mobile app downloads fell 57% in the same time period. Data from Data.AI, another tracking firm, shows similar trends. The report continues on usage has also decreased, with monthly active users falling 14.8% globally and 17.8% in the US year-over-year. [00:01:11] For the month of September, per similar web. User churn or users who stop using the app increased more than 30% year-over-year as of September 2023, per Sensor Tower. Web traffic was down 7% globally and 11.6% in the US for [00:01:27] the first nine months of 2023, compared to the same time period in 2022, per similar web. Now, hilariously, Axios cites this statistic as a bright spot for X traffic to Elon Musk's personal profile and [00:01:43] posts were up 96% year over year in September. And for a man with an ego as big as Elon Musk, that might be the only statistic that matters. Does he really care if the app is being used more or less? As long as more people are going to his Twitter profile to see all of [00:02:00] the tweets where he says interesting or concerning or looking into it one of his personal favorites. Now, despite Elon's personal account doing great, a decrease in overall engagement, along with concerns around brand safety, has pushed advertisers away from X. [00:02:18] While most tech firms have experienced slower ad growth over the past year, X's advertising business has nosedived. Musk himself admitted in September that the company's US ad business was down 60%. [00:02:34] Ebiquity, whatever you say that, which works with 70 of the top 100 top-spending advertisers, said that just two of its clients had purchased ads on X last month. It was down from 31 brands in September last year, prior to Musk's takeover of Twitter that October. [00:02:50] And because of that dive, insider intelligence estimates that X's ad business will bring in $2.9 billion this year, down from roughly 4.14 billion in 2022. [00:03:06] Part of the reason users and advertisers are fleeing is the increase in hate speech and disinformation. And if you don't believe me, don't just take my word for it. Here's Yoel Roth, the former head of Trust and Safety at Twitter, laying out this issue last month. [00:03:21] >> Speaker 2: But let's look at the evidence. We have seen just this week, a study out from researchers in Europe talking about the prevalence and spread of disinformation across all of the major platforms. I will give you one guess which platform has the highest degree of spread. [00:03:38] It's Twitter. We have also seen research that suggests that the prevalence of hate speech and abuse on the platform is higher. We've seen independent research that suggests that ISIS has staged a 70% return on Twitter. This isn't like free speech, this is ISIS, right? [00:03:55] We're not talking about the gray areas of content moderation. By any measure, it's worse. >> Speaker 1: Well, if your measurement of how good a site is by how many members of ISIS are active users on it, I would say everything's looking pretty good. [00:04:12] They're coming back. ISIS is back, folks. Things are going very well. And Yoel Roth, in that interview with Kara Swisher, also showed some specific instances of homophobia directed at him by Elon Musk. Who pretty much called him a pedophile with his own account, in his own words, [00:04:30] massive instances of anti-semitic attacks against him. An insane death threats that he had received that have been allowed to just stay up on the platform. Mind you, when Elon Musk took over, he said, if you're looking for good information on trust and safety on Twitter, Yoel Roth is the person to go to. [00:04:49] And just a few weeks later, when Yoel Roth realized that he was in over his head with the Musk takeover and that things were not going to be copacetic with new Twitter, he left. And then Elon Musk called him a pedophile. I'm not joking. You can all look it up. That happened. [00:05:05] So he's an expert in the field. He's someone who's experienced bigoted hate on the platform. And, Ben, I've noticed a large increase in anti LGBTQ and misogynistic rhetoric being espoused against me. This morning, I reported an account that was just N word hater. [00:05:24] And I got an email from Twitter saying that that was fine, that they couldn't find any violations in their terms of service with an account literally just named N word hater. I've thought about getting off this platform so [00:05:40] many times, and I am certain that if Elon Musk has to charge me a dollar, like, he's floated the idea around of, I will no longer be using this site. >> Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, it's working as he intended when he bought this thing, he bought it specifically so [00:05:56] that he could allow the reampplication of hateful voices. He likes to be in the mix in a horrible way. He likes to create torment, really, among the population. He's not doing this to try to improve the town square that Twitter once was. [00:06:16] He's doing it to really throw bombs in the middle of it and try to see what fires he can start because he enjoys being in the middle of this. Like you said, his own engagement is up, and that's probably all he cares about. The man's business instincts are so suspect. [00:06:31] He buys this for an insane, overvalued amount of money he knew was overvalued, tried to get out of it, was forced to buy it, and then just throws away all brand value and renames the thing X. A letter that literally is used when you lose something, when you get the guest wrong on Family Feud, big X in the middle of the screen [00:06:51] when you don't like an act on America's Got Talent, they get X'd. If you break up with someone you were once in love with, they're now your X. And this is what he wanted to call the platform. It is certainly not speaking amazingly to his business savvy. [00:07:07] Or maybe he's too distracted. Maybe you shouldn't already be the CEO of a major car company and of a major space company and then take over one of the biggest social media platforms on planet Earth. I'm surprised he hasn't yet launched his own aftershave line, [00:07:26] which of course would have to be called Elon Musk. >> Speaker 1: A car company, the head of a car company, mind you, that has been in the throes of litigation regarding racial discrimination and bigotry in their factories. [00:07:41] So I guess this is a man who, wherever he goes, he just loves to bring in inclusivity for bigots. We wanna make a warm, comfortable environment for people to espouse their views of hating people on the basis of their race, their gender, their sexuality. [00:07:58] >> Speaker 3: He's inclusive for all straight whites, though. So keep that in mind. >> Right, now, as a result of Musk's failures, right now, investors who backed his takeover of Twitter are not in a good spot. From The Wall Street Journal, seven banks, including Morgan Stanley, [00:08:16] bank of America and Barclays, lent Musk around 13 billion to buy Twitter a year ago this coming Friday. Under normal circumstances, they would have unloaded the debt to Wall Street investment firms soon thereafter. But investor appetite for Twitter has cooled since the billionaire took over, [00:08:34] forcing the banks to hold the debt on their own balance sheets at a discounted value, very, very discounted value. It continues on the banks currently expect to take a hit of at least 15% or roughly $2 billion when they sell the debt. [00:08:50] People familiar with the matter said that would mean hundreds of millions in losses for those holding the largest pieces, which include Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Barclays, and MUFG. And I think this should get everyone a little bit of an insight into how [00:09:06] investment banking works. They're all idiots, and they throw money at the loudest, most popular idiot in the moment, and that idiot burns all of their money in a big pile and has a bonfire over it. I mean, just look at things like WeWork as a prime example of that. [00:09:25] They were not investing in Twitter, which has always operated at a loss. They were investing in Elon Musk, who is an idiot. It was a poor man's idea of a rich man, who is a dumb man's idea of a smart man and who had no concrete plans for how to make this platform better. [00:09:42] He had an idea of a platform that was silencing conservative voices and allowing extreme left-wing voices to say whatever they wanted with impunity. And then he bought the platform, looked at it and realized that wasn't how this platform was operating at all. [00:09:59] But now I have to follow through on all those ridiculous promises I made to the MAGA people. So we're gonna bring back the N word on the app and that's what these people invested money into. And Ben, it's so ridiculous, it's so goofy. And the financial investment banking specifically is the biggest joke. [00:10:18] >> Speaker 3: I'm surprised he didn't rename the company N instead of X. It would have been more directly to the point, at least for what he's trying to accomplish. It's just the guy does not have an interest in fairness or in giving voice to the voiceless. He has an interest in giving voice to the hateful, to the bigoted, and [00:10:37] it's pretty gross. And that's why I use Twitter now, and I will always call it Twitter and won't call it X. I use it in a way that I would recommend for you, Ray, post and don't look at the comments, stay out of the fray. Just get your thoughts out there, post your links and then stay away. [00:10:53] Once in a while I skim and I ignore all the hateful, horrible stuff, and that's about all I try to do. But it's so true that you make the most noise and you get the most attention. I would be so much further along in my life if I were only louder and [00:11:09] more stupid. I'm considering it. >> [LAUGH] An interesting plan, something to lean into in the future, maybe.