Most of My Friends are Leaving Twitter/X, But I'm Sticking Around

I'm not ready to bail. For serious reasons and also to stick it to Elon.

Sree’s newsletter is produced with Zach Peterson. Digimentors Tech Tip from Robert S. Anthony. Our sponsorship kit.

🗞️ Know anyone who’s a crossword puzzler? Tell them that today, Sree’s Sunday NYT Readalong featured Deb Amlen, a columnist in the Games section. Get a free PDF of the puzzle and watch her help our viewers solve it together.

🎤 Wednesday, Dec. 18 at 7pm ET, Digimentors & Neil Parekh are producing and moderating a discussion with the Graphic History Company and SPIN Magazine on the year in hip-hop. Watch it here!

***

AFTER BARACK OBAMA’S FIRST ELECTION, ONE OF THE WAYS I EXASPERATED MY FAMILY was by consuming copious amounts of Fox News. Everyone was mad at me for having Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity and other deplorables piped into our living room every evening. I watched Fox for the same reason I’d always first read the nonsense-peddling opinion pages of the print WSJ every morning: to understand the conservative point of view and to get my blood boiling (the news pages of the Journal continue to be stellar journalism).

Today’s equivalent of that experience is continuing to stay on X when most of my friends have left or are leaving the platform. Walt Mossberg, my tech journalism hero, wrote on Threads that anyone who stays on Twitter should “ask yourself if you want to hang out at a Nazi bar.” Kara Swisher, whom Mossberg calls “queen of all media,” labeled it “a Nazi porn bar.” Like them, celebrities with millions of followers who have walked away include Stephen King, Mark Hamill, Alyssa Milano and Don Lemon.

Don’t just listen to Mossberg and Swisher (the duo gave me a #lifehighlight in 2015 with a speaking slot at their legendary Code conference to talk about tech and art in my Met Museum days). Here’s X’s own AI, Grok:

Despite all this, I’m not ready to bail on X. Watching Fox closely after 2008 gave me early warnings about the growth of the Tea Party, the rise in white nationalist resentment and the war on all things Obama. Progressives who weren’t paying attention were caught by surprise about every horrible thing that followed.

In that same vein, I find staying on X, so far, helps me keep an eye on the horrors that await us. Also, I get to criticize (and occasionally make fun of) Musk, Trump, Ramaswamy and today’s other major deplorables on their favorite platform (it’s pretty cathartic!)

It may be nearly impossible to change the minds of X’s hardcore Musk-ites or MAGA meme peddlers, but it’s completely impossible if we’re not there. As I wrote a couple of weeks ago, progressives need to embrace the fragmentation of the media and information space. Another part of that is meeting people where they are. The die-hards are the die-hards, and I’m not so naïve as to believe that those hearts can be un-hardened, but I do think that there is a cohort of Musk-curious people out there—a great share of them are young men—who are willing to avoid the MAGA Kool-Aid. I understand if you think that’s not your fight, you’re tired of fighting, or you just can’t deal with the abuse any longer.

According to the Pew-Knight Initiative, a lot of people are hitting their limits:

Many of the people who shape the news—for better or worse—are still tweeting. Although no longer a space to discuss political issues in any meaningful way, it’s still a place to get news.

But look at these trust numbers:

The disinformation, the racism and relentless abuse in the mentions tab are exhausting. Combine that with the wide-ranging, overwhelmingly negative consequences of verification-by-subscription, and the already psychologically damaging aspects of the platform being compounded by the inability to find community, knowledge, and credible information from people who know what they are talking about.

Twitter’s unsung strength was the ability to go into reply threads and find new, interesting people talking to each other in ways that felt, at the time, truly revolutionary. That little honeymoon lasted a few years, and the company’s inability to generate lasting revenue gradually led us to where we are now: X is still called “Twitter” by most people, it’s basically a neurotic online Newsmax/Fox News brainstorming session, and users are fleeing to Threads, Bluesky, or just being a bit less online. I am on both Threads and Bluesky, and the latter certainly seems promising. I am also experimenting with Spread (its slogan: “access authentic media sourced by the most credible people.”)

Taken together, it’s not hard to understand why people are leaving. This John Herrman piece makes a really good, very fundamental point about X versus old Twitter:

If you can set aside the elite psychodrama surrounding Musk’s takeover, though, you can more clearly see something else: an utterly new platform built within the old one, modeled not on Twitter but on all of its much more successful competitors. In its deprioritization of links, and emphasis on on-platform content, X is following Facebook’s lead circa 2015. In its desperate but persistent attempt to build a paid on-platform creator economy, it’s mimicking YouTube. In its pivot from feeds, friends, followers, and persistent audiences to disorienting algorithmic video recommendations, it’s chasing after TikTok (and Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts).

Herrman’s piece was a reaction to this Nancy Scola piece in Politico Magazine. “Democrats Face an Existential Crisis on X” is a little much in terms of a headline, but the piece is informative.

From an unnamed Democratic Hill staffer:

“It’s [Twitter/X] already been legitimized,” said the staffer about X, pointing to how baked into the Washington landscape the platform has been.

“There’s really nothing to be gained” by leaving, argued the source, saying that as a practical matter it does little to challenge Musk’s dominance — or create any sort of hit on his wallet — given that X still seems unable to actually make money.

“So [by continuing to use the site],” said the source, “we’re making Twitter only slightly less unprofitable?”

The counterargument to that is obvious: “Musk is terrible, and depriving him of a nickel is worth it,” or something to that effect. The guy is worth $400 billion and his purchase of Twitter—combined with the $277 million he spent to get Trump elected—has been a bargain by any measure (he’s already increased his net worth by $77 billion since the election). He has a megaphone wired into a president, he’s tied into the MAGA crowd (now, also the awarding government contract crowd), and X’s failure as a business makes zero difference either way. [My most recent essay on Musk, written a week before the election is here; and the eight I wrote in the first year since he bought Twitter are here.

For many institutional Democrats, activists, and news organizations, X/Twitter is still likely to be worth the hassle and the horrors. It may not be a priority, it may not provide the hard ROI, but it is still a space where you can have some impact. People in the business of changing minds and spreading credible information need to stand strong, and we need to be willing to work outside of our bubbles.

Disagree with me? Agree? Have another way? Let us know in the comments.

— Sree | Twitter | Bluesky | IG | LinkedIn | FB | YouTube / Threads | Spread | TikTok

💵 Recently, I made the case for the funding of new media outlets. Am working on some ideas and looking for collaborators and partners. Ping me: sree.sreenivasan1@gmail.com.

---

Promotional message:

Indiaspora, the India Philanthropy Alliance, and Dalberg Advisors are conducting a survey of Indian American attitudes toward philanthropic giving and nonprofit volunteering. This information will help leading charities working in India to respond and engage effectively and to do more good. By completing this survey, you will help the mission-driven sector to thrive.

Please consider taking 15 minutes today to complete the survey.

---

DIGIMENTORS TECH TIP | CES 2025: Bigger, But Will It Be Better?

By Robert S. Anthony
Each week, veteran tech journalist Bob Anthony shares a tech tip you don’t want to miss. Follow him @newyorkbob.

It’s almost that time again: Winter arrives, days start to get longer and gadget geeks start to prognosticate what flashy, shiny gizmos will be announced at the annual CES electronics mega-showcase in January.

For the first time since 2020, CES (once called the Consumer Electronics Show), will fill the entire Las Vegas Convention Center (LVCC) campus plus other venues. This marks a full comeback from CES 2021, which was all-virtual due to the pandemic.

CES 2022 to 2024 filled LVCC’s Central and North Halls and spilled into West Hall, which opened in 2021, but for those years the gigantic, two-level South Hall complex remained vacant. While the growing physical footprint of CES 2025 bodes well, the number of attendees and the quality of the exhibitors remains in question.

According to the Consumer Technology Association (CTA), which operates CES, 138,789 attendees and 4,312 exhibitors were at CES 2024 in January, a marked increase from the 117,841 attendees and about 3,200 exhibitors at CES 2023. However, no attendance estimates for CES 2025, which runs Jan. 7 to 10 after two media-only days, were made during an online press conference last week.

A peek at the CES 2025 exhibitor directory gives a hint of what the show will look like. For example, while both levels of South Hall will be full, it will not be with the mix of large and small booths from recognizable exhibitors as in the past. Instead, the CES 2025 floor map shows hundreds of mostly small booths filled mostly by foreign companies with generic-sounding names.

Artificial intelligence will be a key topic at CES 2025, and, not surprisingly, one of the coveted CES keynote address slots will be filled by Jensen Huang, CEO of NVIDIA. The chipmaker, best known for its game-friendly graphics chips, has grown to a multi-trillion-dollar corporation thanks to the explosive sales of its processors designed specifically for AI tasks.

“Speaking of AI,” said CTA President Kinsey Fabrizio during the press conference, “you are going to see innovations driving the next wave of discovery across the show floor from healthcare to mobility.”

Chipmakers Qualcomm, Advanced Micro Devices and Intel will also be at CES and may announce new AI-centric hardware for upcoming PCs or outline roadmaps for their AI-driven futures.

Missing from CES 2025 will be automakers like Ford and General Motors, but Honda, BMW and Scout Motors, a new automaker owned by Volkswagen which is channeling the spirit of the 1960s-era International Scout truck, have staked out exhibit space.

Sony Honda Mobility, a partnership of Sony Group Corp. and Honda Motor Co., is expected to announce an almost-ready-for-production version of the Afeela concept electric vehicle it has shown off at Sony’s huge booth at previous CES events. Many other auto-related companies like Waymo, which specializes in autonomous-driving technology and parts supplier Hyundai Mobis, which will be showing off a “holographic windshield display” and a “brainwave-based driver distraction care system,” will also be at CES 2025.

So, the question remains: Will thousands of small exhibitors attract attendees to CES as well as hundreds of larger ones? We’ll see soon.

---

Did we miss anything? Make a mistake? Do you have an idea for anything we’re up to? Let’s collaborate! sree@sree.net and please connect w/ me: Twitter | Bluesky | IG | LinkedIn | FB | YouTube / Threads | Spread | TikTok