A upturn in robotsto raise in hate speechand content moderation policies What are they unequally applied to users of the social media platform.
These are just some of the issues that have plagued X, formerly known as Twitter, since Elon Musk acquired the company in October 2022.
Now, about a year and a half later, it appears that Musk’s lost almost a quarter of its user base.
Elon Musk says Grok AI will be available for premium X users ‘later this week’
According to new data from third-party mobile analytics firm Sensor Tower, the number of daily active users of X mobile apps in the US has fallen 23 percent since November 2022. That would be the first full month in which X operated under the direction of Musk.
Looking at year-over-year data, mobile app users in the US are down 18 percent from just a year ago.
As of last month, there were 27 million daily active users on the X mobile app in the US.
X in decline?
According to Sensor Tower research, as first reported by NBC NewsX had «the largest decline in active users compared to its peers.»
And the contrast between X’s competitors on social media is rigid.
The tweet may have been deleted.
Along with Musk’s X, the platform that has faced the biggest drop in users according to data from Sensor Tower’s mobile application is TikTok. The viral short-form social video app usage base is down 9.5 percent from November 2022. Instagram is down nearly 4.5 percent, Snapchat is down nearly 2 percent, and Facebook is down less than one percent. .
«This decline in active users of Mobile App Tower in his investigation.
The steepest drop in X usage appears to have occurred over the past summer. In a span of two months, Musk announced two of the biggest changes to the platform: Musk started July 2023 with speed limitation then Twitter users, limiting the number of times they can reload their Twitter account and limiting the number of tweets they can see in a day. Then, in August 2023, Musk began de-platforming his Twitter brand, removing the iconic bird logo as well as the name «Twitter» and replacing with «X». At that time, the researchers noticed that X’s App Store downloads were immediately negatively affected by the name change.
By September of last year, X had already lost more than 17 percent of its U.S. mobile app users, according to Sensor Tower.
X questions the findings but does not prove much.
Musk’s platform addressed the Sensor Tower findings and the NBC News report through a public statement posted by an official X account, @XData.
X says the report «incorrectly states that fewer people use X today than before.»
The tweet may have been deleted.
The statement goes on to note that the report is «based solely on estimates from @SensorTower, which does not have access to actual data from these platforms and does not include mobile.»
Mashable should note that Sensor Tower estimates are based solely on mobile user data through the platform’s official app, so it does include mobile estimates. X could be trying to refer to mobile Web use via a mobile web browser, which Sensor Tower does not take into account.
X’s statement concluded with a «too long; I didn’t read it» summary: «tl/dr: Both our own data and self-reported data from other platforms tell a different story.»
X did not provide any data or evidence to refute the report or support its claims.
In an unrelated post published before the Sensor Tower report, the @XData account claimed that X had «250 million people using X every day» and «550 million people visit the global city square each month.»
However, according to data Musk posted to his account shortly after acquiring the company in November 2022, X was attracting nearly 260 million daily active users by the end of that month. If the recent statistics posted by the @XData account are representative of X’s daily active users, then this would certainly be demonstrate that there has been a decrease in X users.
