The hordes of people leaving X are a sort of statistical obituary to years of propaganda. X is in big trouble, mainly because of its policies and algorithms and a bizarre relationship with infuriated advertisers.
Like most of American media, X instantly demoted itself to half of its own market share with its politics. It also became a servant, like FOX, to one side only. That’s not working out too well.
You’ll also notice from media coverage that nobody’s questioning the self-decapitation and disembowelment of X. The other glaring problem is that somehow this situation is now seen as normal.
It isn’t normal. People and advertisers are voting with their dollars and clicks.
Disgruntled X users are now heading to Bluesky in vast numbers. Millions of people have basically abandoned X. Bluesky looks a bit like early Twitter. Seems quite OK as an environment. I haven’t seen a rabid lunatic yet.
The new and huge problem is the quality of information vs communication. This is now an abyss of opposing information.
Unless there’s some middle ground, and the medium isn’t hopelessly biased, social media has just machinegunned itself in the foot. Politics is not the sole interest of the world. Other things happen, too, y’know.
That’s where audience loss is likely to be fatal. What if you don’t want to read about The Adventures of Donny and Elon in Disneyland?
What if you want a broad and useful mix of your own interests, instead?
The sole and whole purpose of social media is communication. Reducing your content range to such a narrow focus means you inevitably lose users.
Nor is the Chicken Little approach to information exactly popular. Nobody listens to raving lunatics if they don’t have to.
The possible exception to that theory is screen-fed America. Markets and media businesses take a long time to change course. This market doesn’t eat solid food anymore. The child-psychology is pretty obvious. These sources will probably simply continue to produce pablum.
The total stagnation of American mass media was one thing. This social media situation is stagnation of real-time information as well. X has made itself useless to its users.
People obviously don’t like that. The move to Bluesky is self-defense. The social media market can blame itself for a newcomer just walking off with its customers.
Let’s talk “dumb”.
Billions of dollars of investment are now evaporating in a festering social media environment and those billions aren’t coming back.
The World’s Richest Sudden Instant Fan Boy doesn’t have the excuse of being geriatric or illiterate. He should have enough metrics to see the cliff coming.
The big money markets in the US are all blue. The black holes are all red, with the possible exception of Texas. Ignore those big blue markets at your peril. Lose those markets and you’re doing hillbilly scale dollars. These much smaller markets can’t deliver the same value. Advertisers and marketers know that.
The rest of the world is also reacting very negatively to the toxicity of social media. The hubris and hype are all American-generated. The rest of the world can easily ignore most of this garbage.
What if reality gets involved in this mess? Economic risks and social disintegration are circling like buzzards over America in huge numbers with dollar signs on them. All types of media should be building financial fallout shelters about now. Markets can evaporate overnight.
No amount of fake news hysteria and self-congratulation can make an impression on that situation. You need “Make America Solvent Again” to do that, and it looks like that’s not happening for the next four years.
How would you read a commercial market that is basically suicidal? Would you focus on customer retention in the afterlife? You might have to do that.
Social media needs a functional market to exist at all. If the money’s pulling out, the message couldn’t be clearer.
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Disclaimer
The opinions expressed in this Op-Ed are those of the author. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Digital Journal or its members.
