The difficult farewell to Elon Musk’s X platform

Stephen King is not only one of the most successful writers in the world, but also a social media icon. The master of horror novels has more than seven million followers on Elon Musk’s X platform (formerly Twitter) alone. But now King von X has had enough: “I’m leaving Twitter. I tried to stay, but the atmosphere just became too toxic.”

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King is not the only celebrity who turns his back on X: among the X-renegades are actress Jamie Lee Curtis, Hollywood star Jim Carrey and musician Moby.

Television journalist Don Lemon also announced that he wanted to leave the platform, saying he felt that X was no longer a place for “honest debate and discussion.”

Jamie Lee Curtis posted a screenshot of her X account deletion on Instagram and wrote: “God, give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. Courage to change the things I can. And the wisdom to recognize the difference.” And while many media outlets continue to publish links to their articles on X, the British newspaper “Guardian” jumped ship.

X dropouts in Germany

There are also prominent X dropouts in Germany: The spectrum ranges from the Bundesliga football clubs SV Werder Bremen and FC St. Pauli to the Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale) to companies like Aldi Nord. The supermarket chain was disappointed that Elon Musk’s platform had done nothing to combat discriminatory and racist comments about models in an Aldi brochure.

The Hamburg Kiez Club had been active on the platform since 2013 and had around 250,000 followers. Owner Elon Musk turned a debate room into a hate amplifier, the association explained. “Racism and conspiracy legends spread unhindered or are even curated. Insults and threats are rarely sanctioned and are sold as supposed freedom of expression.”

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Social media consultant Martin Fuchs observes that the former Twitter has continuously lost relevance, reach and relevant voices in Germany since Elon Musk joined the company.

Among those leaving are important non-governmental organizations (NGOs), politicians – but also journalists. “Nevertheless, as of today, X remains the most important place for opinion elites for real-time political discourse in Germany,” says Fuchs. That is also the reason why the SPD and the Green politician Robert Habeck returned to X.

How strong is the “X-odus”?

Simon Hurtz, an expert from the Social Media Watchblog, says that no one can seriously predict how sustainable the “X-odus” will be in the end. “But one thing is clear: the larger the account, the more important the signal.” If politicians, celebrities or authorities shut down their X accounts, it triggers media debates and may serve as a role model. “A platform grows with the relevance that users assign to it.”

However, not only the further development of X remains unclear, but also who can collect the majority of the disappointed X users.

Stephen King said goodbye to X in favor of Threads, the alternative platform of the Facebook group Meta. The service, which was initially based on Instagram, is approaching the 300 million user mark. Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg wants to take advantage of the opportunity and announced the possibility of creating separate feeds for certain topics or profiles.

Others prefer the open-source, non-commercial platform Mastodon. The start-up Bluesky is one of the big winners. Jamie Lee Curtis, Werder Bremen and FC St. Pauli will also be found there in the future.

Gewinner Bluesky

Bluesky recorded now around 20 million users. Compared to X and Threads, the service is still relatively small, but is growing quickly. In September, Bluesky only had a total of ten million users. A week after the election, Bluesky was the top-ranked free app in Apple’s App Store – at least in the USA. But in Germany, Bluesky is currently in second place in the “Social Networks” segment – behind Threads from Meta, but ahead of Telegram, WhatsApp, Facebook, Discord and Signal.

Martin Fehrensen, founder of the Social Media Watchblog, points out that immediately after Elon Musk took over Twitter, there were a large number of so-called early adopters who were looking for a new digital home at Bluesky. “Ultimately, no critical mass has been achieved so far.”

However, the current dynamic can no longer be compared with the situation a year ago, says Fehrensen. “While Bluesky was the largest WhatsApp group in Germany a year ago, Bluesky could now actually develop into the new digital home of many Twitter fans.”

The network is changing

But regardless of the criticism of the political course of Elon Musk, who supported Donald Trump enormously in the election campaign and denounced German Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) as a “fool” in German on X: X has to change in order to remain relevant. “The internet has moved on, video has replaced text,” says expert Hurtz. “A “short message service” will probably never again achieve the political, social and media importance that Twitter did ten years ago.”

According to Hurtz, communities are now spread across a wide variety of platforms. “It is clearly too early to say definitively which network is the best contact point for which topics. On Bluesky you can exchange ideas about German politics, so far with a clear left-liberal influence.” This leads to predominantly civilized discussions, but could deter conservative politicians. “It remains to be seen how much plurality of opinions emerges on the platform.”

By Editor

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