Criticism of X (social network)

X Corp

X, formerly known as Twitter, is a global social-media platform that facilitates real-time communication and the sharing of short messages, known as "tweets". Founded...

A new study suggests that scientists are leaving X (formerly known as Twitter) in significant numbers due to its declining professional value. Many now find Bluesky to be a more effective platform for networking, outreach, and staying updated on research.

36K votes, 1.1K comments. 34M subscribers in the science community. This community is a place to share and discuss new scientific research. Read…

Shifts in U.S. Social Media Use, 2020–2024: Decline, Fragmentation, and Enduring Polarization

The social media ecosystem appears to be in flux. Twitter’s rebranding to X has come to symbolize a broader reorganization of online publics – political reshuffling, user attrition, and uncertainty over the role of legacy platforms. Simultaneously, the shift from text-based, networked feeds toward algorithmically curated, short-form video has accelerated, with TikTok setting the pace for the wider ecosystem [18, 14, 16]. At the same time, everyday communication increasingly migrates from large, open networks to semi-private spaces such as group chats and messaging apps. Commentators describe a digital public sphere in transition: smaller, more fragmented, less dominated by traditional social networking sites, and rise of more broadcast-oriented forms of media – with some even suggesting that we are seeing the beginning of the end of the social media era.

My 2024 thoughts on the state of social media

I see a continued fragmentation of social media as people leave X(Twitter).

The Pulse of The Planet, Flatlined: Why Twitter's Is Failing to Grow

No, it's not rampant abuse, weak leadership, or a product that intimidates new users. The roots of Twitter's stagnation go back to 2010.

Twitterlike is a Bad Shape

Twitter and its imitators have adopted a structural design that is fundamentally bad for people. This isn't just a matter of who's in charge; it's a problem with the thing itself. Forcing users to adhere to a tight character limit, discouraging link culture, preventing people from editing their own posts, steering people into sharing things they hate, incentivizing rage bait with trending feeds, subjecting people to decontextualized encounters, encouraging conflict by discouraging tags, and leaving users powerless to clean up the resulting mess—all of this is bad shape.

The Weird, Fragmented World of Social Media After Twitter

The common forum that Elon Musk destroyed will never be replaced—and that’s okay.

Facebook Wrestles With the Features It Used to Define Social Networking (Published 2021)

Likes and shares made the social media site what it is. Now, company documents show, it’s struggling to deal with their effects.

Do social media threaten democracy?

Facebook, Google and Twitter were supposed to save politics as good information drove out prejudice and falsehood. Something has gone very wrong

Study: Social media probably can’t be fixed

The [structural] mechanism producing these problematic outcomes is really robust and hard to resolve."

Shifts in U.S. Social Media Use, 2020–2024: Decline, Fragmentation, and Enduring Polarization

Using nationally representative data from the 2020 and 2024 American National Election Studies (ANES), this paper describes how U.S. social media use has shifted across platforms, demographics, and politics. Overall platform reach declined, driven by growth in the share of Americans — especially the youngest and oldest cohorts — who report using no social media. Visiting and posting activity on Twitter/X and Facebook have fallen by nearly 50% since 2020, with the decline on Twitter/X driven primarily by reduced participation among Democratic users. While Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter/X lost ground, TikTok and Reddit grew modestly, consistent with a more fragmented digital public sphere. Platform audiences aged and became slightly more educated and racially diverse. Politically, most platforms shifted toward Republican users while remaining, on balance, Democratic-leaning. Twitter/X experienced the largest change: among posters, the partisan balance swung over 70 percentage points from Democrats to Republicans. Across platforms, political posting remains closely tied to affective polarization, as the most partisan respondents are also the most active. As casual users disengage while polarized partisans remain vocal, online discourse becomes narrower and more ideologically extreme.

They Criticized Musk on X. Then Their Reach Collapsed. (Published 2025)

Three users who disagreed with the site’s owner saw views for their posts plummet.

Xodus

...Building a movement away from toxic social media platforms, towards alternative open social media...

Anatomy of an internet argument

Social media isn't toxic, most people just haven't figured out the game (yet)