Billionaire Elon Musk rebranded Twitter into X in 2023.
But 2024 was the year that he finally killed any lingering remnants of the beloved platform.
It’s officially X now, whether you like it or not. Which is probably for the best, because whatever X is, it is not Twitter.
Since Musk took over in 2022, the once-informative, weird, funny, and engaging platform has devolved into a shell of its former self.
It’s now a pay-to-play content farm, beset by AI hucksters and conspiracy theorists looking to make a quick buck, where the back-and-forth banter the site was known for has entirely disappeared.
Here’s how Musk made it happen.
Altering the algorithm
In October, just before the election, many began noticing a sharp rise in right-wing content, which coincided with Musk’s full-throated endorsement of President-elect Donald Trump.
As it turns out, according to an analysis by the Washington Post, Republicans were “posting more, getting followed more and going viral more.”
It doesn’t hurt that Musk’s change to the blue check function alters who goes viral more. Those who want to pay Musk get boosted in timelines, leading to extra retweets and engagement. And the people willing to give Musk money tend to be more right-leaning.
Musk is free to alter the algorithm however he wants, and conservatives routinely complained about bias on old Twitter, viewing this as a necessary course correction.
But at least, back then, right-wingers could still be seen and reach audiences. For all its faults, they still flocked to Twitter.
But now, any semblance of conversation is completely gone.
Changing the block function
One of the most fundamental features of any social media website is the block function. Being able to keep away trolls, bots, and harassers is a much-needed function for any healthy platform. So it’s no surprise Musk, who said blocking “makes no sense,” ruined it.
Now, public posts can be viewed by anyone, including those you’ve blocked. X claimed blocking was being utilized “by users to share and hide harmful or private information about those they’ve blocked.”
Needless to say, making it easier for creeps to stalk your profile isn’t a function anyone asked for.
Training Grok
Musk this year very quietly decided to start feeding all your data into Grok, his so-called anti-woke AI chatbot.
Users, who were opted into the feature by default, were never notified of the change nor asked to give their consent.
Luckily, there is a fix. You can opt-out. But the fact that Musk would sneakily use all users’ data to train his cringe AI is quite telling.
It was these major moments—data use, block policy, and algorithm shifts—that caused a number of users to finally call it quits. One wave came before the 2024 election, but after Trump won, and with Musk poised to take a prominent role in government, a second, much larger set of users departed.
And as its base of people who used to use Twitter dwindles, X has only become more X-like.
Those three were enough to seal the platform’s fate, but they weren’t even the worst of Musk’s moves.
The next three things on this list all involve Nazis.
Musk amplifies Nazis
It’s bad enough that Musk allows Nazis to spread their rhetoric on X. It’s another thing entirely when he boosts them himself.
And that’s what Musk has done on numerous occasions. One of his favorite accounts to promote is @iamyesyouareno, a pro-Hitler user with over 420,000 followers.
In response to complaints, the user in question denied being a Nazi. Users were quick to bring receipts in the form of his own tweets.
Still, none of that stopped Musk from engaging with it.
Verified Hitlers
The blue check mark used to be a way to verify you were looking at an account belonging to a public figure, such as celebrities, journalists, and more.
Now, anyone willing to fork over some cash can be given a blue check.
And those blue checks, and gold checks used for official organizations, have been handed out with little to no questioning.
In 2023, X was approving accounts with the N-word in it.
Despite the outcry, it doesn’t seem like a problem Musk has tried to fix. This year, a pro-Hitler account was given a gold check.
Hitler Ads
Advertisers have fled X in droves, and in their place, awful promotions are filling the void.
In April, an advertisement calling for reinstating the death penalty for homosexuality made its way across the platform.
But, like all things X and Musk, it comes back to Nazi Germany.
In October, an account selling toys of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler repeatedly had ads approved, even in Germany.
But Musk’s Nazi-adjacent behavior wasn’t the only problem.
He also made one other big fundamental shift on the platform: Hiding likes.
Removing like visibility
One of the cornerstone functions of social media is the “like” button. But in June, Musk decided to fundamentally change the feature.
Whereas before you could see who liked what, Musk chose to make likes entirely private. X argued that the change was designed to boost engagement and stop users from being afraid to like potentially controversial content.
In the process, though, users lost access to some of the most entertaining content on the platform. Unless Musk changes course, we’ll never again catch Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) liking porn posts on 9/11.
Rate-limiting disaster accounts
Rate-limiting is a function that stops accounts from sending out too many posts in short succession in order to cut down on spam.
But with Musk at the helm, accounts that need to be able to frequently tweet have been targeted.
After a serious earthquake in Japan at the beginning of the year, an organization providing much-needed updates to those affected was stopped from sharing further posts.
After considerable backlash, X fixed the issue. All through this, Musk touted X’s role as the home for breaking news.
But thanks to his embrace of AI, nearly every news event on the platform is beset by fakery.
Endless AI slop
Prior to Musk’s takeover, Twitter did its best to inform users if they were looking at altered content. And crack down when that content violated its policies.
In January, nude AI-generated pictures of Taylor Swift exploded, racking up millions of likes. It took X hours before it was able to get the problem under control.
And when the election came around, Musk helped shovel out AI videos.
He posted a fake campaign video for Vice President Kamala Harris. He pushed clips of him and Trump dancing. Grok made videos of Trump and Harris holding hands.
While many could argue these clips were clearly jokes, Musk and his followers fall for fake content all the time. as hucksters use deepfakes and doctored images to juice engagement in the midst of major news events.
All these were decisions Musk made, making X exactly what he wants it to be.
Meaning Twitter, as it once existed, is completely dead.
The Daily Dot looks back at the year that was in our 2024 Year in Review.
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