Fidelity has said it is worth 1/5 of when Musk bought it.

https://mashable.com/article/x-twitter-value-down-fidelity

And so no it can't be saved if it continues on its current trajectory.

That valuation says more about Fidelity's fidelity to the narrative than it does about the value of TwiXXer.

Fidelity is an investor in X.

And they posted this in their annual report as they are required to by law.

The fact that everyone still calls it twitter answers your question. =)

Maybe if he reverts the name.

I haven't updated the twitter app just to keep the bird (no, more like I find the X ugly), mayyyybe I can make this phone last long enough so I never actually see the X.

> any chance for twitter to be saved ?

Define saved.

Hell, define "Twitter" too. Does GP mean the company? The user community, whatever that is? Some core functionality of the site?

Bankruptcy , Spam , Branding , Workforce .

X/Twitter going bankrupt would be a choice by Musk. He presently shows no indication of having lost love for it.

It's bleeding users. Bleeding users = no revenue . He can't sustain it forever from his pocket and lost user means the platform is as worthless as a random mastodon instance that no one knows about.

> can't sustain it forever from his pocket

Why not? Even if he doesn't restructure the debt he's basically created, in xAI, enough personal wealth to bankroll X/Twitter for a decade.

Likely not worth it — consider the kinds of stuff Elon leads. Twitter is the least prestigious among them. He has far more interesting places to gamble on.

> not worth it -- consider the kinds of stuff Elon leads. Twitter is the least prestigious among them

It's practically getting him Cabinet-level power without the accompanying checks in an incoming Trump administration. (Or Vance '28. Et cetera.)

America didn't have a Rupert Murdoch since Hearst. Newsrooms preserved their independence. Twitter doesn't have a newsroom. It doesn't have journalists. It has Elon and his peons. That's powerful.

Bluesky / ATProto is a better iteration that can be so much more in the long run

No personalized algo in bsky. I don't want to see a thousand low quality post from a specific feed.

The Discovery feed is personalized and very reminiscent of the twitter feed.

The open protocol nature also means anyone can write any feed that works any way they want for anyone to use

The discovery feed is barely functional . Dosen't learn what i want to see nor does the search . Open protocol and api is bskys best feature that i love but a real algo isn't one git clone away for average user nor it is is financially viable.

Still better than what Elon had been forcing into my Xitter feed before I left for good

Depends if Elon bought out the bondholders yet

There is nothing left to save.

There never was. Twitter was always a cancer, and if Musk does manage to drive it into the ground then he deserves a Nobel Peace Prize for this.

If it worked for Kissinger, I don't see why not.

Thankfully twitter format will autodie soon with newer generations.

>Twitter was always a cancer

You know they don't literally mean that right? This joke is seriously getting tired imo. Twitter actually has an established space in discourse and it shapes conversations or used to shape conversations. It has literally helped people get resources during times of crisis, most recent event where twitter helped people real time was during Covid in 2021, here in India. People were exchanging info real time for oxygen cylinders and during this crisis they made a special section for it as well which updated very frequently so people could get help or give help. When our govt didn't do shit, Twitter helped.

There are many such examples, Twitter is(was) always at the fore front whenever there was some war/event happening and reporters preferred to post updates on twitter real time instead of their news boards.

You might not see value in it, but if it goes away, I doubt that space will be filled easily. Threads is for entertainment. I don't see any of the "threads" on that platform making to mainstream discourse.

Let's please stop making this tired argument.

Twitter is really important for humanity whether you believe it or not.

Twitter was always cancer. It was before Musk, and it still is. You just happened to like how this particular turd smelled before.

> Twitter is really important for humanity whether you believe it or not.

This may be true. But whatever it speaks about humanity, it is not very flattering.

Do you think another social network couldn't have filled this role? I don't know about India, but to me Twitter with its length limits seems to be the ultimate Outrage Generation Machine. Easily 99% of Twitter content I see is either ragebait or jokes, and there's only so many people good at joking.

If 99% of Twitter content you see is ragebait or jokes then isn't that on you for following accounts that post this type of stuff?

I've gotten enormous value from it from following accounts that post content I deem relevant to my interests.

Don't you view your timeline?

My claim is that the very structure of Twitter emphasizes that type of content, more than any other large social network. Whatever you or me see isn't very relevant, it's anecdata.

When the only way to interact with Twitter was via SMS (hence the 160 character limit), ragebait was basically non-existent.

Since the eternal September (prior to Musks' acquisition) the lowest common denominator has been getting lower by the year.

You have a point that blasting out a tweet which is limited to a low character count does lend itself to ragebait yet the volume of ragebait tweets, in my opinion, is also influenced by the current culture of the network (Musk) and the context of the times (election 4 weeks away).

Fair enough, thank you for your input.

Twitter shouldn't be privately owned. That's the problem - Jack Dorsey wasn't able to promise a non-censored town hall and neither was Musk. They are running a business that is inherently at-odds with the ideal of informing people. They can't make money just providing Twitter - as a business it doesn't work.

The utility Twitter provided isn't written-off, but it really shouldn't have happened on a for-profit advertising platform. What people are unwilling to accept is that Twitter was lightning in a bottle - it won't come back because everyone learned the lesson that it doesn't make money. You can either move onto a radical platform that tries to fix the original sin (eg. Mastodon/BlueSky/Nostr) or you can stick with the huddled masses that rely on a censored and monetized platform to speak freely online.

The radical platform alternatives still censor and often to the whims of a random person. It's like a reddit subreddit or wikipedia article: you are censored by the moods of the admin. They are privately owned.

The solution is easy; host your own instance. Federated solutions let you put your money where your mouth is and host yourself to your own content. If what you have to say is considered useful, you'll be a viral figure in no time.

Allow-only instances won't show your content but chances are they won't show most content. These are hugboxy environments you'd probably not want to be around anyways (and they sure don't want to be around you).

Block-only instances will show your content as long as it doesn't piss them off. If you are being racist or posting illegal content, you're gonna get muted. They have absolutely no obligation to propagate your content if you're not going to reach bare-minimum decorum.

> If what you have to say is considered useful, you'll be a viral figure in no time.

The assumption that useful speech goes viral is incredibly misjudged.

I can see how you'd think that if you've never used Mastodon.

> Jack Dorsey wasn't able to promise a non-censored town hall

I believe his version of twitter was the closest thing we could get to an "uncensored" twitter. Everything is relative. How do you run and sustain a platform where people who call for genocide are getting their voice amplified? And is that even legal? Like, the platform has to take responsibility if it isn't going to "censor" speech.

Freedom of speech shouldn't mean freedom of reach. Yeah, if you want to make some ill-taste racist jokes, you must be shadow banned so that unless people specifically search for your name, the platform shouldn't amplify their voice.

> it won't come back because everyone learned the lesson that it doesn't make money

How can anyone dismiss Twitter earning >$5B in revenue as something not viable? Dorsey's twitter had too many employees. IIRC, their personnel costs alone was something like a $1B. Why do you need such a big team? Why are you hiring so many people and running mini experiments in the company hoping that you can become facebook level money making machine?

Dorsey should have realized that they are never going to become facebook level rich and just stay content with what they have and grow modestly and layoff people. Keep working on your core features. You don't need to be the next facebook, you are already twitter, heck, you have your company's name as a noun in a dictionary. Reduce your costs and coast. Nothing wrong with that.

But you need to be content with yourself first to think about company's decisions like that.

What has happened with twitter is truly shameful and Dorsey got with the wrong people (that's what i believe happened since he rolled his old twitter equity into x(itter) equity).

Why did dorsey left bsky for twitter again ?

> I believe his version of twitter was the closest thing we could get to an "uncensored" twitter.

I mean... I don't agree with that, considering that BlueSky exists now. I never used either of Dorsey's social medias but I would argue BlueSky is fundamentally closer to uncensored than X or Twitter ever was.

> How can anyone dismiss Twitter earning >$5B in revenue as something not viable?

Because their expenditures were through the roof, and even running it on a skeleton team a-la X seems to be losing money hand over fist. Twitter could have contented themselves with lower revenue, but they'd have to redesign their product stack or find ways to make more money elsewhere. Both of those take time and burn goodwill with the community.

At the end of the day, as a lifelong outsider to Twitter, it's just an endlessly ironic fate for the site. I have no love for Elon Musk but I also don't see Jack Dorsey as some messianic genius. The dude sold out his site in his final years because he failed to operate it for a decade and couldn't force people onto his crypto bandwagon. He never tried to correct course on Twitter (instead funding BlueSky as a contingency) and basically left his userbase to suffer as a value-add to his stock package. When I hear people complain about how bad Twitter is I just imagine frogs sitting in a boiling pot asking why their legs are numb. Do we really have to go over this again?

> twitter helped people real time was during Covid in 2021

That's not twitter helping, that's people helping. If there were no social networks, this would still happen. Having a billionare controlling global speech isn't worth it in any way even if it brings punctual benefits like the ones you cited

It has longposts now, so that's an improvement at least.

How ? Are long text for a social media that has 24 hour lifetime and exclusive to premium users worth it . I would be nice if it was available for all , since sometimes you need more than 280 character to express your self .

> Twitter was always a cancer,

Twitter is the ONLY social network that is actually social, and attempts to connect strangers. Contrary to Facebook, etc where you need to be ‘friends’ first.

Reddit, Threads, Mastodon, Bluesky, Instagram, TikTok etc.

Even Facebook has features for connecting strangers e.g. Groups.

Reddit ? that's a forum for content generation

Mastodon ? No one knows you unless you have other socials

Instagram ? it blocks pc traffic , no retweet

Threads ? maybe the only one viable but it's meta

Facebook ? Um good luck

Tiktok ? It's just videos , it's far from soical media .

This isn’t even at odds. Connecting strangers historically was one of the main recipes for social fireworks.

X's crowdsourced fact checking is a really good feature. It's worth using for that alone. The pathological liars at the brazilian government would get fact checked on a daily basis.

X is better than ever. Remember the days you’d get banned for criticizing Covid nonsense? Or the days when you’d have the U.S. government telling Twitter to censor people they didn’t like? That happens far less now. The left doesn’t want free speech because free and open debate seems to scare them.

Don’t believe me? Hilary Clinton called for the criminalization of “misinformation.” Who exactly determines that? The government? The government and politicians lie every time they speak but they want to ban others from the same ability?

Don’t like an idea? Block the person. Ignore it. Move on to something else. If someone’s beliefs are so fragile they can’t take criticism, then that’s the problem of the person holding those beliefs, not the one criticizing them.

A lack of free speech is a hallmark of fascism (and communism for that matter.) Democracy only thrives within a free market of ideas. Once you lose that, it’s 1984.

It's worse than ever . Did you even read news related to twitter ? The X branding ? Mass layoff that's killing the development, Crypto spams ? , Blue check confusion , Link penalty ?

It hasn't been worse ime, but the journalists who say they left it can't stop saying it's worse.

There have been more government takedown requests actioned under Musk:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/09/25/elon-mu...

This is very misleading.

>Comparing the 2021 report to the current X transparency report is a bit difficult, as the way the company measures different things has changed. For instance, in 2021, 11.6 million accounts were reported. Of this 11.6 million, 4.3 million were “actioned” and 1.3 million were suspended. According to the new X report, there were over 224 million reports, of both accounts and pieces of individual content, but the result was 5.2 million accounts being suspended.

https://www.wired.com/story/x-twitter-first-transparency-rep...

Not sure how it is misleading.

You are comparing account reports versus account + content reports.

don’t you still get flagged or removed for saying cisgender?

> A lack of free speech is a hallmark of fascism (and communism for that matter.) Democracy only thrives within a free market of ideas. Once you lose that, it’s 1984.

We tried the free speech experiment and, honestly, lies to mislead the voting public are worse than yelling "fire".

So I disagree that speech should be completely unregulated- that leads to facism as well.

Edit: also, Twitter is absolutely not free speech. Try saying "cisgender" or criticizing the platform owner.

I agree with the free speech part and so for Xitter to be a tool for free speech we need to make it public and federated. Otherwise it is just Elon Musk's manipulation tool that you love.

it already has been