X (twitter) is Doing Just Great

According to Fidelity, a mutual fund owning a stake in X Holdings, the platform's value has dropped by 71.5% since Musk's $44 billion purchase in October 2022. This valuation places X at approximately $12.5 billion. The platform has seen a 15% drop in monthly users in the first year under Musk's leadership, amidst rising concerns over increased hate speech. Musk's tenure has also been marked by substantial staff cuts, reduced moderation, and a warning from the European Union about the high ratio of disinformation posts on X. The revised valuation from Fidelity covers the period up to November 2023, which includes the aftermath of major companies withdrawing advertising following Musk's endorsement of an antisemitic conspiracy theory.

Source: The Guardian

X experienced yet another significant outage lasting over an hour. During this time, users were unable to refresh their timelines on mobile apps, and the web version displayed a generic welcome message. Netblocks confirmed the outage as significant and international, not related to country-level blocks. While timelines were inaccessible, users could still post, and notifications for new posts were functioning. The outage also affected the visibility of accounts like Elon Musk's and current CEO Linda Yaccarino. The problem began just before 12:30 AM ET, with no immediate indication of the cause. Service was restored around 1:35 AM ET, but the cause of the problem remains unexplained.

Source: The Verge

X experienced an outage where all outgoing links stopped functioning, redirecting users to an error page with a quirky message. This issue, which lasted for about an hour, is reminiscent of a similar incident in March when links and images were taken down due to an internal change gone wrong. The March outage was attributed to a mistake by the site's sole remaining site reliability engineer following massive layoffs.

The recent outage was resolved without any public acknowledgment from X's support team or executives.

Source: The Verge

At the DealBook Summit in New York, Elon Musk expressed strong disdain for advertisers boycotting the platform due to his amplification of antisemitic posts. He accused the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) of trying to "kill X" by urging advertisers to avoid the site and responded to perceived blackmail attempts over advertising with a blunt "Go f— yourself." Musk singled out Disney CEO Bob Iger during his remarks and suggested that his fans might boycott advertisers in retaliation. Despite recent apologies for his controversial posts, Musk's actions have led to a significant pullback from major advertisers like Disney, Apple, and others, and have driven some high-profile users away from the platform.

Source: CNBC

Elon Musk's X Corp. has sued Media Matters for America, alleging defamation after the nonprofit reported that ads on X were shown next to pro-Nazi content, causing advertisers to pull out. The lawsuit claims Media Matters used deceptive tactics to make such ad pairings appear more common than they were. X CEO Linda Yaccarino defended the platform, asserting that these pairings were not widely seen by users. In response, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has launched an investigation into Media Matters. Media Matters stands by its reporting, calling the lawsuit an attempt to silence criticism. The issue is part of broader concerns about brand safety and Musk's recent controversial statements.

Source: Axios

Several major advertisers are withdrawing from X, significantly impacting its ad business. This follows Elon Musk's endorsement of an antisemitic conspiracy theory and reports of increased antisemitism and hate speech on the platform. Media Matters for America highlighted that ads from various companies appeared alongside far-right posts on X. Despite X CEO Linda Yaccarino's statements about combating antisemitism and discrimination, companies like Apple, IBM, Disney, Comcast/NBCUniversal, Lions Gate Entertainment, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Paramount have paused their ads. Additionally, the European Commission has frozen advertising on X due to a rise in disinformation and hate speech.

The White House has also condemned Musk's post promoting antisemitic and racist hate.

Source: Axios

X has disabled a feature allowing users to report electoral misinformation, according to a report by research organization Reset.Tech Australia. This change comes ahead of significant elections in the US and a major referendum in Australia. Initially introduced in 2022, the feature allowed users to report misleading political posts, but recently, the "politics" category was removed from the reporting options in all regions except the European Union. While users can still report posts for other issues like promoting violence or hate speech, the removal of the political misinformation reporting feature may hinder efforts to curb electoral falsehoods on the platform.

Despite the criticism, Musk advocates for X's "Community Notes" feature as a better alternative for fact-checking.

Source: Reuters

X has announced that it will be shutting down the Circles feature, which allows users to share posts with a select group of people rather than all followers, by October 31st. Introduced in August 2022, Circles aimed to provide a more private sharing experience. However, some posts intended for Circles were mistakenly appearing on the platform's For You timeline, compromising the feature's privacy. While X did not provide a specific reason for discontinuing Circles, the platform has been focusing more on its Communities feature, which is similar to Facebook Groups. This shift might be part of the reason for deeming Circles redundant. Users will no longer be able to create new posts for their Circle or add people to it after the shutdown date, but they will still be able to remove people from their existing Circles.

Source: The Verge

X has updated its terms of service to explicitly ban web scraping and crawling without prior written consent. This move is likely aimed at preventing AI models from training on its data. The previous terms allowed crawling in line with the platform's robots.txt file, but the new terms remove this provision. Additionally, X has modified its robots.txt file to disallow crawlers from accessing specific types of information like likes and retweets. The changes come after Musk has expressed opposition to companies using Twitter/X data to train AI models, even going as far as filing lawsuits against unknown entities for scraping data.

Source: TechCrunch

Elon Musk, in a post attacking the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) for allegedly causing a significant loss in revenue for X, claimed that the platform has lost 90% of its value since his acquisition, potentially bringing its worth down to $4 billion. Musk's attack came after ADL objected to anti-Semitic tweets from far-right groups on X. Musk accused ADL of being overly aggressive in demanding account bans and blamed them for a substantial part of X's revenue loss. He stated that ADL might be responsible for around $4 billion of value destruction, implying a total loss of $40 billion from the original $44 billion purchase price.

Source: Fortune