Use of Twitter in US Fell by a Fifth Since Elon Musk Took Charge

Since Elon Musk acquired Twitter and relaunched it as X, its use in the US has decreased by more than a fifth, data from app-monitoring company Sensor Tower shows.

The number of Americans using the social network every day as of February 2024 has decreased by 23 percent from November 2022—shortly after Musk finished his takeover. In the same time frame, every other significant social network saw a decline in users, although none by nearly as much as X did.

Twitter, now X, loses more than other social media platforms

According to statistics, which were first published by NBC News, Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat all experienced user slumps of less than five percent, with TikTok experiencing the closest decline, coming in at just under ten percent.

According to Sensor Tower statistics, X performed marginally better globally, losing fifteen percent of its users, amounting to 174 million daily active app users. The app-monitoring company depends on several sources to maintain a reliable panel of people to sample and does not monitor users who use the social network via desktop programs or web browsers.

Social media platform X implicitly rebuffed Sensor Tower’s claims in a public post. In an unsigned message, it said that “250 million people use X every day” with 550 million visiting every month. It also said that “daily average time spent on platform” and “daily active user minutes” are both up year on year.

Fall in the value

The fall in the value of the company has been reflected in assessments by the fund manager Fidelity, one of the investors in Musk’s buyout of the previously publicly traded company.

Fidelity’s blue chip growth fund, which holds its stake, has continuously marked down the value it attributes to the company, hitting its latest low of a 71.5 percent reduction in value from November 2022 to November 2023.

Since Musk paid $44 billion for his stake, that brings Fidelity’s assessed value for the overall company to just over $12.5 billion.

On Monday, a judge in California dismissed Musk’s lawsuit against the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a non-profit that has published reports chronicling the rise of racist, antisemitic, and extremist content on the platform since Musk’s acquisition.

“Sometimes it is unclear what is driving a litigation, and only by reading between the lines of a complaint can one attempt to surmise a plaintiff’s true purpose,” wrote Charles Breyer, the US district judge, in the ruling.

“Other times, a complaint is so unabashedly and vociferously about one thing that there can be no mistaking that purpose,” he added. “This case represents the latter circumstance. This case is about punishing the defendants for their speech.”