Why does it reek of a failing social platform for many? With the Trump discussion, it's one of the most active it's been for a while. Well, this is a phrase. Anthony Bourdain, as you said, used to describe restaurants that were going under. And the way he described it was it wasn't they'd go under overnight or even for a few months or a while. But there's something in the air when there's a place that isn't quite right. And I said that applies to X, formerly known as Twitter, of course. And it's for many reasons. I think what's happened on that network since Elon Musk took over quite clearly is it's become almost a single-issue network for Elon Musk's politics, this issue of that, the culture wars as we describe it, and what has what is happening less on X is some of the communities that made many normal people want to use it in the first place. So for talking about football, talking

about music, talking about books, whatever, those communities are finding it harder to interact with each other. And certainly, no new people seem to be joining to join in those discussions in a way they might have done previously. If you go to your own ex page, you haven't been posting since 2023, but you were almost forced to re-engage with the platform for this story, and then, you know, Musk re-engaged with you. Yes, quite so. I haven't posted, yeah, for almost a year. And that was based on my feelings towards what my feed was showing me in terms of the types of content I was getting without following certain users. And I didn't feel like it was a yes. So. Well, this is something I'm not saying to me today or mentioned me about today. I checked my screen time. It's actually an average of 19 minutes a day this week, and that was only because I downloaded the app to listen to his conversation, his interview with Donald

Trump earlier in the week. So without that, which went on for almost a couple of hours, I think my time would actually be very, very minute. I check in on it to see what's happening. I'm a journalist; of course, I need to do that. But in terms of engaging with the network, I think its usefulness has gone now. But I think it will continue in some form for a while. But in terms of this useful utility for people, I think that era is behind us. DAVIES You know, I use a lot; I spend a lot of time on the platform. I share a lot of my reporting. I don't see a lot of data supportive. That video does very well when I show video to the content. And it's interesting; one of the communities that does well there is Tesla, of course, but your issue in the opinion piece is about advertising, advertise of flight in money.

Does Musk even care about the advertisers? Is it even a priority for him to have revenue growth? It's a basic question. I mean, look, we've seen what Elon Musk has said directly to advertisers in words that we can't repeat on air, only to then a couple of months later now, so to be suing some advertising groups in order to, say, punish them for boycotting the platform. I mean, look, I think Elon Musk is quite sincere when he says he doesn't care if advertisers don't want to advertise on his platform, given he thinks it's now this sort of arena for free speech. But the problem is he'll need to care, right? I mean, this is a website that needs money to survive. As rich as Musk is, it still needs to be a functioning business. And I think that's going to be Twitter's problem as we go past the election, because right now I think a lot of the

attention on it is to do with the presidential election. Once the votes are counted, people may yes.

X's Failing Social Network Syndrome: Bloomberg Opinion

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