Twitter usage in US ‘fallen by a fifth’ since Elon Musk’s takeover

Twitter usage in the US has fallen by more than a fifth since Elon Musk bought the site and renamed it X, according to data from app monitoring company Sensor Tower.

As of February 2024, the social network’s daily app users in America had fallen 23% since November 2022, just after Musk completed his acquisition. All other major social networks saw declines over the same period, but none came close to X’s user decline.

The closest was TikTok, which fell just under 10%, while Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat all saw user declines of less than 5%, according to the data. first reported by NBC News.

Globally, The analytics company does not track users who visit the social network via the web, nor those who use desktop apps, and relies on a number of sources to maintain an accurate panel of users to sample.

Although X did not respond to a request for comment, the company implicitly rejected Sensor Tower’s claims in a public post. An unsigned message stated that “250 million people use increased.

The company’s decline in value is reflected in assessments of fund manager Fidelity, one of the investors in Musk’s acquisition of the previously listed company.

Fidelity’s blue chip growth fund, which owns its stake, has continually written down the value it places on the company, hitting its latest low of a 71.5% drop in value between November 2022 and November 2023.

Since Musk paid $44 billion for his stake, that brings Fidelity’s estimated company-wide value to just over $12.5 billion.

On Monday, a judge in California dismissed Musk’s lawsuit against the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a nonprofit that has published reports on the rise of racist, anti-Semitic and extremist content on the platform since Musk took over.

“Sometimes the cause of action is unclear, and only by reading between the lines of a complaint can one attempt to surmise a plaintiff’s true purpose,” U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer wrote in the ruling. “Other times a complaint is so unabashedly and vociferously about one thing that there is no doubt about that purpose. This case represents the latter circumstance. This case is about punishing the defendants for their statements.”