It seems that turning X/Twitter into a far right echo chamber has cost Elon Musk billions.
When Elon Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion back in 2022, he brought a sink into Twitter headquarters as a joke because he became the new owner and he wanted everyone to “let that sink in”. It wasn’t the greatest joke out there and it was a joke that largely feel flat outside of right wing extremists.
One of the reasons the joke fell flat for most people is because there was a huge amount of fear for what Musk was about to do to Twitter. It led to alternatives like Mastodon to receive a massive influx of users and put several alternatives on the map, as it were. Those who were fearing that Musk was going to turn Twitter into a hellscape were largely correct. Fast forward to today and X/Twitter is overrun with porn bots and scams, right wing extremists have largely taken over the platform, driving out numerous reasonable users in the process, and the algorithm is basically tailored to spreading hate and misinformation, serving right wing extremists in the process.
What’s more, X/Twitter proved time and time again that it is not brand safe for advertisers – a primary revenue driver for the platform. Every time major advertisers are dumb enough to give Musk another chance, they found their ad money was sponsoring neo-nazi content, antisemitism, hate speech, scams, and more. To pour salt on the wound, Musk himself told advertisers to fuck off if they don’t like it. So, fuck off they did. When Musk saw revenues falling as a result of his typically poor decision making, he managed to one up his own stupidity and sue advertisers for the crime of failing to advertise on his platform. Either way, revenues have largely collapsed under Musk’s tenure.
Of course, none of that really matters for Musk because, for him, he’s turned X/Twitter into his own personal megaphone. Because Musk has no real filter and is prone to making rash decisions, this has caused him to get in trouble both in Britain and Brazil. In short, if there is a way for Musk to make an even bigger mess of the situation he finds himself in, he’ll probably do it.
While Musk has lived a life where he is basically free from the consequences of his actions thanks to his family owning a slave emerald mine, that doesn’t necessarily mean that his actions don’t have consequences at all. It just means he is largely shielded from it all thanks to his immense inherited wealth. Those consequences have proven to be very real. One metric is the fact that X/Twitter’s value has been plummeting ever since he took over. Fidelity has estimated that the total value of the company has plummeted by an estimated 79%. From TechCrunch:
The asset manager’s Blue Chip Growth Fund now values its stake in X, formerly known as Twitter, at approximately $4.19 million, based on newly released disclosures from Fidelity’s Blue Chip Growth Fund. The firm’s unit has reduced the value of its holding in X by a total of 78.7% as of August end.
For context, Fidelity had initially invested $19.66 million in X through the Blue Chip Fund, as per regulatory filings. This isn’t the first time Fidelity has cut the value of its holding in X. As of July’s end, Fidelity had valued its shares in X at about $5.5 million.
This 78.7% markdown implies that Fidelity is currently valuing X at about $9.4 billion overall. (TechCrunch’s assessment assumes that Fidelity’s investment in X was made at a $44 billion valuation. The acquisition was financed through a combination of equity and debt.)
One thing is for sure, the drop from $44 billion to $9.4 billion is a significant drop, but that does track with every observable event that has happened on the platform. Really, the only reason the platform has any value at all is because it is still riding off the brand recognition it has built in the years prior to when Musk took over. Twitter, after all, is a very recognizable brand (which Musk tried to destroy when he tried to turn the platform into “X”), so people still go to the brand despite the value of doing so is still very much non-existent.
Many of the reasonable users have largely since fled to the likes of Mastodon, Bluesky, and Threads at this point. Interactivity on the platform is largely made up of botnets trying to help push hate, scams, and disinformation. The user experience is really bad on X/Twitter and it is significantly better on the alternatives these days. I know my personal experience on Mastodon is way better at the very least.
At any rate, X/Twitter is continuing to be yet another failed right wing echo chamber, joining the increasingly long list of failed right wing echo chambers like Parler, Gab, and Truth Social. While some mistakenly believe that it’s because they push an “anything goes” agenda, that’s not what these platforms are actually about. Those platforms have long censored anything that contradicts the far right ideology. Whether that is promoting women’s rights, equality, environmental issues, or more, platforms like those will quickly censor, take down, and ban to keep that kind of speech off of their platforms. This is far from the “anything goes” idea that some seem to have about these platforms. X/Twitter is, of course, not that much different from those other failed experiments.
Unless things change significantly, X/Twitter is going to continue down the path of destruction. Maybe it will eventually get sold once Musk finally has his fun or maybe it will linger as Musk’s own personal pet project. Who knows? Either way, it’ll be anything but a success at the very least if things continue on the way they have been in the last 2+ years.
