The new data — comprehensive and definitive — should put to rest the countervailing narratives over Musk’s management of the app. Under his stewardship, X’s daily user base has declined from an estimated 140 million users to 121 million, with a widening gap between people who check the app daily vs. monthly. X’s remaining daily users are engaged similarly as before. But the pool is shrinking. Apptopia pulls its data from more than 100,000 apps on iOS and Android, along with publicly available sources.
So apparently it lost only 13% of daily users? Thats a smaller number than I thought. Still bad news for Twitter though.
On the other hand, it shows the power of content creators and niche communities. I used less Twitter but cannot delete it because it is literally how I connect with my niche community on there.
I think it’s embarrassing how low that number is. If there are alien civilizations out there, I think humans would be at the bottom of the barrel intelligence wise.
It is probably like 50% of the users, the other 74% are bots that are still on the platform. lol
I’m convinced that muskrat did this to destroy a channel of communication. It sure helped me look for more free and open source alternatives. I never used Twitter other than seeing live on the spot events.
Saudi monarchy and other rich folks probably encouraged him further.
Umm… Only 13%?
I thought it would have been more…
Well, the question for me is how many active contributors have left. If those who leave are lurkers, it doesn’t really matter. If those who leave are mostly creators, that’s a serious problem for the platform.
The increase in the number of bots made up for the rest. The “pay a small fee to get an I’m definitely human sticker” scheme was really popular in the misinformation community.
Actually it makes sense. Look around and check how many people actually take action even if it’s inconvenient. Almost no one. For example Amazon and Uber are bad for society in ways that most people understand and are aware of (monopoly, gig economy, killing small businesses, exploiting workers) but what % of society actively avoid them? 5%? Less? So a lot of people will complain that Twitter under Elon is big source of hate speech and misinformation but vast majority will not do anything about it. Probably 5% left for this reason and the rest got annoyed with technical glitches and other changes. Most sheeple will keep visiting.
You had me until the “sheeple” thing.
How do you call people that do whatever everyone is doing without thinking about the consequences?
Idiots.
I will not call twitter “x” till the day I die
It’s only ever “the website formerly know as Twitter” to me.
I’ve taken to calling it “xitter”
Somehow, that reminds me of a snowflake dictator who gets annoyed by a cartoon bear and whom the WHO is very afraid of.
I like Xitter, pronounced like xi- in Mandarin Chinese.
For those who want to know, that makes Xitter sound like halfway between Sitter and Shitter.
As an English speaker you can try to make that sound by saying the Y in YEET and paying close attention to how exactly your tongue is positioned and where in your mouth the air is being constricted. Then try to position your tongue as if you want to say “yeet” or “yes” again, but make an S sound at exactly the same constriction point where you made the Y sound before. If you’re successful, it should sound like a hybrid between S and SH to your English ears.
That’s how I make it anyway, actual Mandarin speakers might find issue with my explanation.
Exactly what I go for. My Mandarin is pretty awful, however.
I am 100% off social media now. Was never a big fan of Twitter but I’m definitely not paying for it. Zuckbook has been deleted for a decade. When Reddit disabled 3rd party apps, that was the last time I used Reddit.
I miss some of the timely news on specific topics but otherwise nothing’s lost.
You can subscribe to news or to Lemmy topics via RSS, you don’t need an account unless you want to reply/comment/post. RSS allows you to subscribe on topic you actually like or want and ignore other stuff. Not having an account can help to be more productive and spend less time talking with others. I have not even a Google account so I can’t neither like or comment on youtube videos or other places that needs an account and I’m totally okay. My only social accounts are this and a Mastodon user I don’t use anymore as RSS is actually how I want to get the news or people opinions/posts.
RSS allows you to subscribe on topic you actually like or want and ignore other stuff.
subscription on lemmy allows you the exact same thing. i don’t see how scrolling through your rss reader should be any different from scrolling through the lemmy app.
Because RSS works with an app that manages more RSS from others sites with different configurations you can set plus some filters you can do to that RSS list. So for me, the RSS app gives me more control on what I have read or not from not only Lemmy news (plus some filters I do, a pre-prosessing after fetching the RSS list using Javascript code). And you don’t even need a Lemmy account for that.
So what’s the consensus here? Does social media not include things where people use usernames, or do Reddit and maybe even Lemmy count?
i am afraid that consensus among general population increasingly is “words mean exactly what you want them to mean at any given moment”. welcome to post-factual age.
Nah, language has always been in flux. We’re not going to become babbling morons any time soon. I mean, we even have writing now so we can save up a definition to adopt or reject later; that’s fairly new in human history.
What is a bit different is that we have to talk about a lot of things that didn’t exist a generation ago, but that’s only a matter of quantity. Every branch of the Indo-European language family adopted it’s own term for iron when it arrived, for example, so I’m sure we’ll settle on some sort of consistent English terminology for different kinds of platforms. We’re just not there yet, as the replies I got show.
yeah, no.
the person who wrote “look at me, i am so cool, i am not using social networks” on a social network didn’t do that because they would be confused by new technology that didn’t exist generation ago, they did that because it worked for narrative they tried to present. and unfortunately it is more and more common and it is not a problem related to technology, just look at any political discussion.
so while what you said is true, it is not very relevant to the discussed problem.
Reddit and Lemmy are definitely social media. A subreddit or Lemmy community is effectively the same idea as a Facebook group, just with pseudonyms.
The quantifiably different thing about lemmy is nobody is trying to trap you in a skinner box.
I mean it kind of ends up being a Skinner box anyway just because of the loop of scrolling, seeing a post, looking at it and repeating. But I agree nobody is actively trying to trap you in one.
Social media has always excluded forum like sites. It most definitely does not include anonymous sites. Social media has a strict definition about having connections to people, none of which Reddit nor lemmy has. Reddit technically added followers, but you cannot see nor interact with them, that’s not social media, that’s an email list. If lemmy is social media then so is every single comment section on every news site ever.
Social media has always excluded forum like sites.
So are you saying that Facebook Groups aren’t social media either? That’s a forum like site. Tumblr isn’t social media either?
This is Merriam-Webster’s definition of social media:
forms of electronic communication (such as websites for social networking and microblogging) through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages, and other content (such as videos)
This is Cambridge’s:
websites and computer programs that allow people to communicate and share information on the internet using a computer or cell phone
Lemmy and Reddit both fall under these definitions.
Reddit technically added followers, but you cannot see nor interact with them,
Not sure what you mean by this… Reddit has had chats and PMs for a long time.
It most definitely does not include anonymous sites
Neither Lemmy nor Reddit are anonymous. They’re pseudonymous. Something like 4chan where you don’t even need an account is anonymous.
So are you saying that Facebook Groups aren’t social media either? That’s a forum like site. Tumblr isn’t social media either?
Correct, facebook groups is not facebook. It’s forum software hosted at the same url as facebook. Same as Facebook Marketplace. Marketplace is not facebook. It’s craigslist. It just happens to be hosted at the same url as facebook. Just like StackOverflow Chat is not question and answer software even though it’s literally hosted at the same url. Just like your phone is not social media even though you both create communities on it and communicate with people on it. If you don’t understand how servers work behind the scenes then maybe that doesn’t make a lot of sense to you, but a url is nothing more than a sign to put on the front of your building. You can then teleport the user to anywhere else in the universe and it can have absolutely nothing to do with the original location at all. This is the framework of the internet.
Lemmy and Reddit both fall under these definitions.
literally every single website on the entire planet meet those definitions.
Not sure what you mean by this… Reddit has had chats and PMs for a long time.
You cannot interact with your followers. I didn’t say anything about communicating with individuals that you see around the site. You have no way to know who your followers are you have no way to message your followers. You have no way to interact with your followers. Reddit is a forum software, exactly like every forum software before it.
Neither Lemmy nor Reddit are anonymous. They’re pseudonymous. Something like 4chan where you don’t even need an account is anonymous.
accounts have nothing to do with anonymity, maybe you’re using some layperson’s version of anonymity, but anonymous means it does not require real information. reddit and lemmy are anonymous.
literally every single website on the entire planet meet those definitions.
Complain to the dictionaries about it, then :) for now I’m sticking with the dictionary definitions.
but anonymous means it does not require real information
Every post you make on Reddit or Lemmy is tied to your username. There’s only one snowe@programming.dev and every post under that username is made by you. That’s why it’s pseudonomous, not anonymous - it forms an identity for you.
An anonymous system would have no way to tell that your posts are by the same person. See something like 4chan. You could post a comment or thread under the name “snowe”, but it’s anonymous because anyone can do that. There’s no way to connect your posts together.
I view the term “social media” as a continuum and not a box. There are degrees of “social media” with the extreme being sites built around using people’s “real-life” identities.
Well, social media has a definition. It is any media that allows you to be social. No matter if it is anonymous or not.
Social media has always excluded forum like sites. It most definitely does not include anonymous sites. Social media has a strict definition about having connections to people, none of which Reddit nor lemmy has. Reddit technically added followers, but you cannot see nor interact with them, that’s not social media, that’s an email list. If lemmy is social media then so are every single comment section on every news site ever.
Social media has always excluded forum like sites. Social media has a strict definition
social media has never excluded anything. it wouldn’t even be possible, and that is because there is no supreme authority that could issue some strict definition that would be legally binding for everyone 😆
social media didn’t come about until after the advent of facebook so yes, by definition it excludes anything before then. Forum software existed for decades at that point. At no point in time has forum software ever been included in anyone’s social media definition, except it seems like you.
Social media has a strict definition social media didn’t come about until after the advent of facebook so yes, by definition it excludes anything before then.
of course, sweetie. and just out of curiosity, what strict definition from some respectable authority other than you are you working with? 😂
social media, n. Websites and applications which enable users to create and share content or to participate in social networking.
social media, noun : forms of electronic communication (such as websites for social networking and microblogging) through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages, and other content (such as videos)
long story short, social media is more than facebook.
social media didn’t come about until after the advent of facebook so yes, by definition it excludes anything before then. Forum software existed for decades at that point.
yes, they did. decades before facebook. you just said that. what you probably wanted to say is that the term didn’t come out until… well here is the news for you. the term usually comes after the phenomenon it is describing, not the other way around. it doesn’t work like “hey guys, i have cool term - social media - now we just have to invent some” 🤣
anyone’s social media definition, except it seems like you
nice projection there. have fun.
In related news, Twitter is up to 80% nazi billionaire despot disinformation bots now. Congratulations!
i actually thought i would go take a look at threads. when i tried to log in on my PC it told me i had to download the app on my phone before it would let me log in with the account they already apparently created for me.
so i left and havent been back
Threads was launched before it was finished to capitalise on one of Musk’s more brain dead decisions - and the Threads website was initially almost unusable (it’s still missing a lot of things - such as federation with Mastodon).
The requirement to use a phone app, if it still exists, wasn’t nefarious, it was just the best they could do without delaying the product launch.
As for “the account they already apparently created”… AFAIK threads runs on Instagram’s infrastructure. So if you have an Instagram account then, yeah, “signing up to threads” is basically just enabling threads on your existing account. If you don’t have an Instagram account I’m pretty sure they create one when you sign up for Threads (but disable Instagram on your account unless you “sign up” over there).
I think Threads won’t try to federate with Mastodon, since it’s most likely to end up as a PR disaster. Half of the fediverse will de-federate with them from the outset, while the rest of them will have their fingers on the trigger. I don’t think the fediverse has any tolerance for their BS after their (and Google’s) rug pull on XMPP.
Funnily enough twitter just suddenly got much worse like a couple days ago for me, only pushing blue-check accounts so I might just finally stop using it
You hypothetically showed them.
Only 13%?? With everything he’s going through, it seems very little to me. I think that the turning point would be top-level institutions and politicians changing Mastodon, I think that as long as that does not happen Twitter will still be relevant unfortunately
It’s certain that of the 120 million that remain, a huge number are bots or spam accounts of some kind. They will be there last “users” to quit the platform. And Elon will be happy to collect ad money to show those bots your ads until the very end.
mastodon finally clicked for me and i don’t miss twitter at all. sometimes i accidentally load twitter out of force of habit, but immediately recognize how much it sucks now and close it again. Likewise, reddit’s dead to me too now. i’m finally starting to feel like decentralized federated social media systems might actually work out.
What is reddit? That shit site with psycho owners who want to go public because they are convinced they are successful, despite not being able to make any money and alienating their moderators and userbase? Lols.
i started reading your reply in the voice of Dracula from the intro to Symphony of the Night XD
“WHAT is REDDIT 🍷💫💥 but a MISERABLE pile of SHITPOSTS!”
The 'net ill-needs a failure such as him.
His terms of service are as empty as his revenues!
all this to say, yeah fam 100% totally agree
Choosing a single letter name was a marketing disaster. Elon is truly clueless when it comes to people and social. Even worse when X implies Ex anything.
Maybe lengthen it to xxx.com? Think anyone owns that one?
What percent did Reddit lose?
I’d be surprised if Reddit hasn’t recovered and grown past its size at the point of the exodus. Only about 60,000 came here. 60k isn’t even a big sub.
I read somewhere that they were 2% smaller in July. We are no threat to Reddit.
Not all leavers join Lemmy, I’m pretty sure some just stopped and found other things to do with their life.
still, enough people have moved over here for Lemmy to finally replace Reddit for my use case (:
Reddit wasn’t much bigger than this when I first used it. This feels a lot like Reddit in those days. It was a nicer place than today’s Reddit.
once again, people turned out to be the root of the problem
The real answer was replacing human-human interaction with human-dolphin interaction.
Still plenty of people who can’t live without reddit unfortunately. We’re just in the initial crowd here. I really think FOSS at this point is the only way to a fair and open future on the Internet Lemmy, Mastodon, etc. are great bastions for that.
On the other hand, the exodus catapulted Lemmy from being an obscure project to a well rounded one. Lemmy doesn’t seem to have as many problems these days as it had initially. Meanwhile, we are spoilt for choices on clients after many of the defunct reddit clients were repurposed for Lemmy.
I think my only concern with Lemmy is that federation is not guaranteed two-way. Some changes have broken federation in the past for certain instances where they can see everything but their comments or posts are not federated out. I would hope, at least in the future, this part of Lemmy would be difficult to break with an update.
yet
Please don’t let this be another Reddit, i didn’t switch because i only wanted to get rid of the platform itself.
Didn’t a lot of people who create content leave, though? 10k OPs is more important than 10k lurkers for Reddit.
I think it’s mostly wishful thinking unfortunately
Meh, whatever. Even if the fediverse were to never get any bigger, it’s still a win. This place is big enough to be stable and generate it’s own content and culture. All that matters is if you’re enjoying it here and actively trying to make it a better place.
it is literally how I connect with my niche community on there
And that’s why it’s only 13%
And he’s not alone.
I’m on tech Twitter and trying to switch to Mastodon. Unfortunately, the latest news and top content are still on Twitter and I don’t want to be missing out on either of those.
A real transition will happen in bursts. I’d love to see stats by interest categories, because I suspect what happens is enough prominent people in some community move at to bring the rest with them, but until that happens there’s no budge.
I don’t think Twitter and Reddit are going to die quickly. They have user bases that they can monetize and bots to flood content. They were shitty enough that enough of left and gave a nice boost to federated platforms. That boost will grow every time those legacy platforms alienate their users by treating them badly. Like windows and Linux.
It might never truly “die”, but losing 10%+ of active users is massive. Twitter got decimated. Literally.
First time I have seen accurate use of decimate and literally together (not a language prescrivist, just find this funny.)
