- Features have to keep being deprecated because once they degrade it's too hard to fix.

- Use is only up when measuring metrics like "we hit our peak user-seconds" which only measures short term usage spikes and not longer time-scale sustaining metrics.

- Lack of diversity of users, instability of ads performance, and a CEO making antisemitic and anti-Palestinian claims has led to advertisers pausing Twitter ads at a high rate. Valuation has dropped to $10s of Billions instead of $44B.

- Small bugs never get fixed (on Firefox mobile if I accidentally hit the "Views" button on a tweet, the pop-up modal is inescapable and breaks my back button and tab state, so I have to open Twitter in a new tab.

Unless they can somehow turn "use" into money, more use does nothing to help X as a company. And the prior method of turning use into money, advertisements, has been dropping like a rock due to the inability of the company to keep ads away from toxic content no advertiser would ever want their ads near.

Can't cut costs to profitability if you are cutting revenue faster than costs.

but is it growing? they have the privilege of maintaining an amazing product

That is meaningless when the vast majority of users aren't paying and won't pay for the foreseeable future. Advertisers pay, and Elon is doing all he can to drive away advertisers. Ad quality on Twitter has severely degraded over the past two months and we all know why.