Elon Musk has managed to decimate Twitter’s UK users since taking over the platform and rebranding it as X, Financial Times analysis shows.

Millions of users have abandoned the platform after the Tesla man appeared at the social media platform’s HQ carrying a kitchen sink in 2022.

Once a thriving space for political discourse, news updates, and cultural engagement, Twitter’s UK usage has dropped by a significant margin, as users seek alternative platforms.

In the UK, where Twitter had been a crucial forum for political debates, this shift has led to a considerable drop in engagement.

Graphical data shared online clearly illustrates the stark drop in UK user numbers, confirming that Musk’s promises to revive Twitter have instead accelerated its decline.

With no signs of reversing the trend, the platform’s future in the UK looks increasingly uncertain.

  • Logi@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    2 months ago

    How can there be number to this “stark drop”? Or is this literally “decimated” and it’s down 10%?

  • BananaTrifleViolin@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    2 months ago

    Pretty rubbish article to be honest. It’s all hyperbole and no data or facts. It includes one embedded tweet with a graph about sharing political content.

    While I suspect it’s true, it’s hard to trust a article that doesn’t back up it’s claims with any data or even quantify the claims it’s making. The closest it gest to data is “millions” but that’s pretty meaningless on its own.

  • MajorHavoc@programming.dev
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    edit-2
    2 months ago

    However useless and abandoned Xitter looks today, we must remember that it is full of bots whose sole job is to make it look less abandoned.

    For any advertisers or Xitter users relying on “reach” reading along - however bad Xitter looks, it’s actually much worse.

    • blackfire@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      2 months ago

      If your platform loses over a million users in a year then I would personally call that decimating. The numbers are still falling too so lets check back in another year

    • atro_city@fedia.io
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      2 months ago

      Wow, 1/3… that’s not “decimated”. There are still enough people on there that it frequently gets referenced. This post and article are proof of it. Shit article.

      When it it’s down to 5-15% of what it previously was, then we can speak of “decimated”.

      • tty5@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        2 months ago

        Historical definition of decimated: reduce by 10%. Not to 10%.

        Modern definition: reduce by significant amount.

      • mr_strange@discuss.tchncs.de
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        2 months ago

        Decimated literally means “reduced by one tenth”. So I guess you’re right. A one third reduction is not “decimated”. It’s three times worse than that.

        • atro_city@fedia.io
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          0
          ·
          2 months ago

          Yeah, I didn’t consider the Latin roots. However, I purport that very few people actually mean “reduced by one tenth” when they say “decimated”. As you pointed out, even the author doesn’t mean that.

      • Maalus@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        2 months ago

        Decimation is a punishment when every tenth person was killed. Not every tenth person surviving.

  • paddirn@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    2 months ago

    Can it just die already? I am so sick and tired of hearing about it and its dumb owner.

  • steeznson@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    2 months ago

    The phrase “absolutely decimated” annoys me since to decimate has a really exact definition of shedding 10% of something

  • comicmuse@feddit.uk
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    2 months ago

    << Notably, the exodus from X in the UK has been heavily concentrated among progressives, while socially conservative Brits have stuck around.>>

    And journalists. Journalists have stuck around too.