The platform’s billionaire owner has seen its value plunge as advertisers run shy, revenues drop and user numbers fall
Two years ago, there was some trepidation among advertisers, anti-hate-speech groups and staff about Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter.
Those concerns have been borne out: advertisers have sharply reduced spending on the platform, Musk has sued nonprofits over their coverage of a rise in controversial content and about eight out of 10 employees have been sacked.
The service, now rebranded as X, is not worth the $44bn Musk paid for it on 27 October 2022 – later tweeting “the bird is freed” in a reference to its corporate logo. The plunge in value reflects the damage done to its advertising-dependent business model.
But its continued influence as a news source and its role as an outlet for broadcasting its owner’s rightwing views to his 200 million-plus followers, means the benefit to the world’s richest person does not need to be measured in financial benchmarks alone.
There’s plenty of good men out there. Society as a whole just seems largely uninterested in men’s problems. They’re expected to always have their shit together in a world designed to make that as difficult as possible to achieve.
I’m sure some people reading that will have strong reactions to the sentiment but it shouldn’t be controversial to say that everybody has problems. If we don’t listen to them then the Andrew Tate’s of the world will step in and make them feel heard. That’s just how people work.