Oct 26, 2023
X Is In BIG TROUBLE Under Elon's Leadership
Advertising and engagement on X, formally known as Twitter, has plummeted under billionaire Elon Musk's leadership.
- 11 minutes
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.
Now Playing (Clips)
Episode
Podcast
The Young Turks: October 26, 2023
- 17 minutes
- 11 minutes
- 15 minutes
- 11 minutes
- 12 minutes
- 7 minutes
- 7 minutes
- 6 minutes