In order for it to be a social network, doesn’t it need to have users?

The months leading up to Verizon's fateful decision in December 2018, they were in the range of over 500 million MAU. Within a couple months after, the number was half that.

Failing to learn the lessons of Betamax continue to haunt decisionmakers, essentially.

The takeaway should likely be: Twitter will be fine if people can still post their porn there.

Wasn't the downfall of Betamax that the tapes were limited to 1 hour (which Sony thought was fine since that was the unit of commercial videotapes) and most people wanted to record sporting events that took longer than an hour?

That didn't really work out.

Exactly my point and that of GP.