Twitter has problems that X can’t solve

Well, he did it. While, deep down, we knew he was crazy enough to do it, we didn’t think he’d actually do it. Elon changed Twitter to X, and we’re all suffering a bit of whiplash. But, for as bold and meme-worthy as this change is, changing Twitter to X won’t fix the platform’s problems.

Right now, Twitter seems to be imploding. Sure, the platform had its critics before Elon took over; all social media sites do. But, when Elon took the helm, our favorite blue bird started taking a nosedive. A slew, rather, a torrent, of questionable changes brought by the billionaire gradually made Twitter a worse place to be.

At this point, we don’t know how long Twitter can limp along like this. While the company’s been gutted to force profitability, it’s undoubtedly lost a ton of money. In fact, it’s valued at about a third of the $44 billion that Elon bought it for (about $15 billion). That number is only going to get lower as more people flock from Twitter to its alternatives.

With all this happening, what is an eccentric CEO to do? Change the name…

Twitter has problems that X can’t solve

When we got the news that Twitter was being named to X, there was a bit of information that we didn’t get. We got no word on what Elon and Twitter are planning on doing to make the platform better. There were no tweets or announcements about how X will be different from Twitter. Something like that would be much better than just switching over.

What we’re getting, instead, is Elon reacting to everyone’s growing contempt for the platform. We get heated tweets about Elon challenging Mark Zuckerberg to cage matches and calling him a cuck rather than actual information.

But there are problems going on with Twitter, and changing the name to X won’t fix them.

Let’s start with the selfish and narrow-sighted changes

Before Elon Musk, changes that Twitter brought, for better or worse, reflected what a group of people thought was good for users. They weren’t all universally loved; you can’t please everyone. But, that’s how most companies are. Changes are distributed after going through multiple brains, and they reflect the company’s views.

However, that’s not what we’re seeing with Elon Musk. The changes that he’s making don’t reflect the company, they don’t reflect what is best for the user; they reflect what’s best for Elon.

He bought Twitter on the platform of free speech, and that’s in his best interest. Links from other platforms like Mastodon and Threads were either blocked or deprioritized on Twitter. He’s battling data scraping, and that led to the rate limit. He thought about getting rid of light mode because dark mode is better in his opinion. The list goes on.

We’re constantly seeing half-baked changes being sent out into the company that only reflect what he feels should be done. It’s like he’s sitting at a computer, coding these changes, and pushing them out himself. They’re half-baked, and they don’t take into account how they affect the average user.

Sure, data scraping is a thing, but limiting the number of tweets that people can view has a more negative user-facing effect than the supposed slowdown. Many people view tweets while not logged in. Requiring people to be logged in inconvenienced people more than it helped them. These changes have larger negative user-facing effects than positive.

The overly aggressive push for Twitter Blue

We get it, Elon is trying to make Twitter profitable. Twitter Blue is a direct source of revenue for the company along with advertisements. However, one thing that’s killing Twitter is his overly aggressive focus on Blue. Immediately after he took over, the price jumped to $8/month ($11/month if you sign up through the app).

Since then, it seems that all new and useful features have been reserved for Blue users. Boost in the algorithm, fewer ads, longer tweets, undoing and editing tweets, text formatting, etc. Free users are sitting by and watching all of these features fly over their heads.

Yes, it’s an exclusive service, and all exclusive services need to have, well, exclusive features. Snapchat+ has some of them as well as Meta verified. However, unlike Twitter, those other services still distribute features to their free users. Free users still feel like they’re using a full social media platform, not the Lite version.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this…

Twitter Blue was originally a service where you’d pay a bit a month and get to test out new features early. They’d make their way to the public after a bit. Well, it looks like Elon just threw that out of the window. Free users are still not able to edit their tweets even when he said that it would trickle down over a year ago. Blue users can type tweets up to 20,000 characters long while free users are still stuck on 280 characters.

Elon is putting so much effort to get the Blue revenue that it doesn’t feel like he’s trying to appeal to Twitter users in general. He’s just trying to make Twitter Blue more appealing so that people will pay.

The diminished staff

Twitter is operating with a skeleton crew now. When Elon took over the company, he wiped out half of its staff in one fell swoop. Entire teams were killed off. Obviously, with such a reduced staff, it’s a lot harder for the company to operate.

Also, Elon fired top executives when he took control. This means that there aren’t any checks or balances to steer him from making awful decisions with the company.

Elon’s playful attitude toward the situation

Elon is piloting a plane in a wild tailspin, and he knows it. Yet, he’s treating it like a joke. It’s okay to make jokes every now and then, and it’s okay to take criticism in stride. But, Elon is striving to be a living breathing meme at this point.

It feels like he’s not taking the situation seriously. Remember, this is the man who walked into the Twitter HQ holding a kitchen sink. This is the man who tweeted “Zuck is a cuck” when Threads launched. Just recently, he posted an AI-generated video of him singing Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up”. This attitude leads the internet to treat Elon and Twitter itself as a joke.

There’s still a chance for a turnaround

So, it’s obvious that Elon is not the man to push Twitter to new heights, but he won’t be responsible for the company going forward. He appointed Linda Yaccarino, the former head of advertising at NBCUniversal as the new CEO of the company.

Linda is a fresh face and, hopefully, has some fresh ideas to turn Twitter around. Could she be the one to turn the company in the right direction? Right now, there’s a lot in the air, and we don’t know if Elon will have some sort of influence in her decision-making. Yaccarino might be the CEO, but Elon is still the owner. We’ll have to wait and see if they can fix the problems affecting Twitter or X.