November 1st, 2023 | RYAN TYLER

Sorry Elon, X Is Still Garbage

Censorship, poor reach and bad algorithms make Elon Musk's platform as worthless as the rest.

After 2015, Twitter started going down hill. There was a brief period before that when the platform offered strong engagement. Any user, new or old, could send out a tweet and receive hundreds of retweets, replies, likes and comments. Real conversations were happening on Twitter before algorithm changes stifled most of the engagement for unverified accounts with fewer than a thousand followers. Under Elon Musk, the platform hasn't improved.

It's obvious the old algorithms are still in place at X. There was a time on Twitter when your tweets were chronological and would appear in your followers' timelines. Now, having followers is nothing more than a badge of popularity. Very few of your followers will ever see what you post. Rather than make the platform better, Elon Musk seems to have made it worse for new users. If you're thinking of starting an account to get your word out and to engage with other people, don't bother. Musk's platform makes it impossible for any new users and accounts to gain exposure organically.

Elon Musk's X is a pay-to-play scheme and an outlet for approved propaganda.

Unless you're a celebrity or massively popular influencer, you won't get anywhere on X. A lot of social influencers who became famous on these platforms, pre-2015, got lucky. They were able to build up their followers, earn blue checks and further build their empires since then. The rest of us get to start accounts and send our posts into the empty void.

To be fair, Instagram and Facebook are no different. In fact, most of the popular social media platforms began copying algorithms that were designed to maximize engagement for popular people, while stifling engagement with and among the peasants. Instagram recently removed their “recent posts” feature from hashtags, making it impossible for Joe Blow to gain exposure. If you are unfamiliar with this feature, it would allow common peasants to post photos under popular hashtags, where everyone who clicked the hashtag could see all the most recent posts from everyone. That feature is now gone. Instagram still has hashtags, but they only allow users to see “top posts” or “recent top posts”.

The peasants and common people can no longer get exposure on Instagram, unless they miraculously gain a thousand likes, from their ten followers, to earn a spot in “top posts” under any hashtag.

It's almost like these platforms are trying to silence the people, while amplifying certain ideas and conversations among society's top tier. One would think Elon Musk, who often blathers on about free speech, would have tried to make X different. It could be true that Musk and his inner circle are so popular and top tier that they have no idea how hard it really is to engage on X. It could be that Elon Musk is just as out-of-touch with the common man as Bill Gates and Barack Obama.

After all, Elon Musk's posts get millions of views and hundreds of thousands of engagements. How could he know anything about being a common person on X?

Posts from many popular verified accounts I have followed for years are also being suppressed on X. Suddenly, over the past few months, certain political voices and influencers of a certain bent have begun disappearing from my timeline. I now have to search them and click their profiles to see their posts. I sometimes realize I haven't seen a certain person post anything for a while, so I click into their profile to find out they have, in fact, been posting with the same frequency as always—I just haven't been seeing it, even though I follow them.

For some reason, X isn't showing me posts from certain popular people I have followed and engaged with for years. Is it because they haven't paid for a blue check, or because someone is still actively suppressing certain political messages? I see other popular accounts that I don't follow and without checks appearing in my timeline regularly.

The truth is, X is a trashy platform with no real worth for anyone outside the elitist bubble. The only people who can find positive value in the platform are celebrities, corporations, politicians and advertisers. Basically, this makes X an outlet for approved corporate and political propaganda. It's not anywhere close to being the “global town square” Musk has said it should be. The tell-tale signs are scattered across the entire platform in the form of accounts with a few hundred followers and posts with only handfuls of views.

It's no wonder Twitter's growth in users started to slow and stagnate after 2015.

How can an X account with 500 mostly active followers achieve an average of 20 views per post? This isn't an indication of free speech, it's evidence of an algorithm designed to advance the speech of some people, but not others. It's proof that X hasn't changed and that the platform is designed to expand the reach of corporations, advertisers, celebrities and politicians.

An account with 500 active followers shouldn't necessarily have 500 engagements, but it should have closer to 500 views.

The only freelance and independent journalists making waves on X—and triggering Musk's self-congratulation for making his platform a place for real journalism—are people who had a head start, or who had a strong framework and following to start with. I dare any unknown, aspiring freelance journalist to try posting their work on X right now, starting from scratch with zero followers. Even luck won't help them get exposure on Elon Musk's shitty platform.

If Musk wants to make X great again, he should take it back to pre-2015, when all posts were chronological to followers and when using hashtags gave people exposure and allowed them to find conversations. Musk has said he hates hashtags, but they allowed nobodies and Joe Blows to engage with each other and to find relevant (sometimes local) conversations. Localized hashtags, named after airport codes, allowed users to find people in their neighbourhoods and to engage in relevant conversations about their communities. Now, everything is mostly muddled together, suppressed, or scattered around by a misguided algorithm. Using hashtags amounts to no more exposure than without.

All posts should be chronologically presented to followers of an account and never removed, censored, or suppressed. Posts from people that accounts don't follow have no business appearing in an account's timeline, unless they are reposted by users the account follows. Hashtags need to make a comeback and the algorithms need to stop suppressing, filtering and censoring posts that use them. Users should be able to click a hashtag and see all posts in chronological order, with an option to see “top posts”. The platform still uses hashtags, but it's clear that algorithms remove and filter certain posts and accounts. That needs to stop.

Elon Musk can keep saying and believing dumb things, like, “Freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach.” It won't fix his shitty platform. What's happening on X is a suppression of reach, which equates to a suppression of speech. By suppressing certain accounts and posts, his platform is actively suppressing ideas. On social media, reach is speech. An account should never be guaranteed engagement in a truly free and open environment where anyone can repost, comment and share—but the current environment on X is not free and open, it's still controlled by suppressive algorithms.

The only way to make X work for everyone is to make it 2012 Twitter again. All of Elon Musk's do-good horseshit about “free speech” and saving civilization has yet to materialize in the real world.