Each time you go to put in writing something in regards to the platform previously often called Twitter as of late, whether or not you prefer it or not, whether or not you plan to or not, you might be additionally going to be wading into political waters.

That’s as a result of Elon Musk has made X right into a political story in itself, whereas any criticism is considered via the lens of non-public hate for Elon, and an effort to cease Musk’s inherently political objectives.

“You hate free speech” is the most typical counter, however in actuality, no one hates free speech, and the overwhelming majority of critics aren’t making an attempt to make a touch upon Musk or his said objectives. In actual fact, those self same critics have been simply as harsh about Meta, TikTok, Snapchat, and so on.

However Elon has deliberately tried to make criticism of X an even bigger subject than simply the failings at X itself. But, it’s tough to not spotlight flaws in Musk and Co.’s logic once they preserve amplifying deceptive stats, which run counter to each different evaluation of the X mission.

For comparability, right here’s a take a look at among the claims made by Musk and Co., versus third occasion evaluation and exterior knowledge, and you’ll decide for your self which is extra probably right.

“X is seeing document excessive utilization”

One of the widespread claims amplified by Musk is that X’s site visitors and engagement stats are rising, and are usually surpassing new document highs.

And whereas graphs like this look compelling, they don’t inform the total story, or actually, even a big a part of it.

This knowledge show is sourced from SEMRush, an search engine marketing analytics supplier. SEMRush solely measures referral site visitors from Google, not app utilization, and for each X and Instagram, upwards of 80% of their respective utilization comes through their apps (within the case of IG, it’s round 97%). So that is solely a fraction of the utilization that each apps are seeing.

However that’s not all. That huge spike on the finish of March/starting of April? Yeah, that’s not reflective of utilization, however a change in SEMRush’s reporting methodology, by which SEMRush started counting situations of site visitors being pushed by Google’s “SERP Options”, these breakout packing containers which might be included inside Search outcomes.

Which, as SEMRush has advised me, disproportionately advantages platforms like X and YouTube, as a result of they’ve extra of those breakout shows, whereas the overwhelming majority of IG posts aren’t listed by Google in any respect.

So ultimately, this chart represents lower than 15% of the entire site visitors to X, and considerably much less of the site visitors despatched to IG, and even then, the numbers aren’t consultant of any main shift in X utilization.

Besides, Elon’s nonetheless comfortable to blast this out to his 176 million followers as a deceptive show of X’s precise efficiency.

It’s examples like this which make it tough to belief the numbers being shared by X, and much more so when just about each third occasion evaluation report signifies the alternative.

• In October final yr, Apptopia reported that X has seen a 13% decline in every day lively customers since Musk took over on the app in late 2022. Apptopia’s knowledge means that the re-brand to X accelerated this decline.
• SimilarWeb has reported that X has seen a 14% decline in cell and net visits since September 2022.
• AppAnnie’s 2023 “State of Cellular” report discovered that X’s month-to-month lively consumer depend declined considerably between 2022 and 2023.
• Edison Analysis not too long ago revealed a report which confirmed that X has seen a 30% decline in utilization over the previous yr.

On steadiness, you would need to assume that X’s utilization numbers are literally declining, not rising, however you may as well confer with X’s personal knowledge on this.

Again in December, X CEO Linda Yaccarino claimed that X was seeing 1.5 million new sign-ups per day.

Which might imply that X’s whole consumer depend must be rising by round 45 million new customers each month. Nevertheless it isn’t.

In March 2023, Elon claimed that X had reached a brand new milestone of 500 million month-to-month customers. In October 2023, when X supplied an replace on its utilization stats, it reported the very same determine for MAU.  

X remains to be seemingly caught on 500 million actives, which means that whether it is seeing 45 million new sign-ups every single day, these new sign-ups aren’t sticking round.

Then once more, that might additionally relate to the subsequent subject with X’s stats.

“Elon has eradicated bots”

One of many greatest components of focus for Elon Musk when taking up the app was bots, and eradicating bot profiles from the app.

Which he has repeatedly claimed to have accomplished.

However he hasn’t.

On the numbers of sign-ups that X claims to be seeing, it appears very probably that many of those new accounts could be bot profiles, whereas X continues to check out new experiments, like charging all new sign-ups $1 to work together within the app, as a part of a program known as “Not a Bot”.

Which means that bots are nonetheless a big drawback within the app.

Certainly, latest evaluation carried out by advert measurement supplier CHEQ, discovered that of all the referral site visitors pushed through X advertisements throughout the weekend of the Tremendous Bowl, virtually 76% of it got here from bot accounts.

Bots are positively nonetheless a big issue within the app, which might even be impacting its general utilization numbers.

Again when Elon was making an attempt to get out of shopping for the app, after his $44 billion bid was accepted by the Twitter board in mid 2022, Musk and his crew carried out their very own overview of the Twitter bot drawback, and located that the variety of bot profiles was considerably increased than Twitter had claimed.

Twitter had lengthy held that the variety of faux profiles within the app didn’t exceed 5% of its whole mDAU depend, based mostly by itself sampling, however Musk claimed that it was truly a lot, far more, together with his personal crew’s evaluation discovering that round 33% of Twitter’s lively profiles have been probably faux.

Musk finally settled on it being a extra modest 20%, whereas noting that the true bot depend was probably a lot increased.

A part of Twitter’s problem in combating bots was that there was restricted incentive for it to take action, as a result of eradicating bot accounts would cut back Twitter’s general utilization stats, and thus negatively impression its inventory value.

Again in 2022, amid dialogue round Elon’s potential takeover of the app, former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey stated that the platform “wants cowl for some time”, within the type of going personal, with a purpose to scale back market scrutiny, thereby enabling it to successfully fight its bot drawback.

Primarily, while you eliminate bots, Twitter’s consumer depend will inevitably drop. However that hasn’t occurred below Musk.

On the time of the takeover, Twitter had 237.8 million monetizable every day lively customers (mDAU). But, simply three months later, Musk claimed that Twitter was as much as 250 million mDAU.  

So not solely did the platform not lose any lively customers on account of Musk’s claimed anti-bot measures, it truly gained 12 million extra. That appears to belie the declare that the platform may have gotten rid of the bots, as a result of it could not solely need to have deleted tens of millions of bot accounts, however added tens of tens of millions extra to make up for them, and extra on prime of that once more, resulting in this increased utilization determine.

Contemplating that Twitter had by no means added greater than 20 million new customers in full yr, that looks as if an unlikely declare.

So is X stretching the reality? Solely Elon and Co. know for positive, but it surely does appear questionable, at greatest.

Lack of Context

Lastly, X additionally retains sharing knowledge playing cards like this, as a way to focus on its significance.

Which seems fairly good, proper? Knowledge offered in graphic kind at all times seems extra spectacular, whereas tens of millions of impressions is important, irrespective of the way you take a look at it.

However then once more:

• In 2014, the State of the Union Deal with generated 2 million Tweets, the precise similar quantity, a decade in the past, at a time when Twitter had half the customers that X does now.
• In 2017, the State of the Union Deal with generated 3 million tweets.
• In 2018, the State of the Union Deal with generated 4.5 million tweets.

So whereas X is eager to current its utilization knowledge in a flattering gentle, the reality is that X engagement is clearly down on earlier years.

The identical additionally pertains to questions round how X is now measuring video views.

In August final yr, X claimed that an interview between Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump generated 236 million views within the app, although the video itself had truly solely been watched 14.8 million occasions.

The discrepancy right here is that X had moved to utilizing its extra basic ‘views’ determine, i.e. the variety of occasions {that a} put up has appeared in consumer feeds, versus its barely extra correct video view depend, which measures what number of occasions customers have truly tapped on the play button and watched greater than two seconds of the clip.

Shortly after this, X eliminated the video views depend from public view, which now signifies that basic customers don’t have any method of understanding what number of occasions a video has truly been considered within the app.

As one other instance, in January this yr, YouTube star MrBeast uploaded a clip on to X, which ended up getting over 156 million ‘views’, although solely 5 million X customers truly watched the clip.

That’s a 96% variance within the ‘view’ depend displayed on X, and the precise quantity of people that deliberately watched the video.

Fairly deceptive, which once more raises questions as to the info that X shares as a illustration of what it truly means, in relation to the platform’s efficiency.

That’s to not say that X is doing horrendously unhealthy. 250 million customers remains to be vital, and X nonetheless performs a key position basically discourse, particularly round actual time occasions.

Nevertheless it does recommend that the info that X shares shouldn’t be trusted as 100% indicative of the app’s efficiency.

Actually, its income knowledge is probably the most vital both method, and experiences recommend that X’s general advert income remains to be down by round 60% versus when Elon took over on the app. That’s not a sustainable consumption, and except X can persuade a heap extra individuals to pay for X Premium, it’s laborious to see the way it can proceed to stay in operation, except it could reverse that development at some stage.

However the numbers additionally recommend that X’s deceptive efficiency stats are failing to persuade its main advert companions, whom it actually must get its enterprise again on observe.

The underside line is that whereas X appears to suppose that it’s highlighting its development with these examples and stats, it truly appears to be hurting its general market standing.

And whether or not you view that as a political stance or not, the info is what it’s on this respect.