Retweet in Retreat

by Fahad Shah

“𝕏 is now #1 for news in India!” X owner Elon Musk tweeted on November 22.

It is no surprise that X has become popular in India, where appetite for independent media is shrinking and conspiracy-theory-driven media are on the rise, even as X’s U.S. user base has shrunk rapidly since the recent election.

The platform’s role in supporting Trump’s presidential campaign and continued promotion of propaganda and unmoderated content have stoked increasing controversy around the globe. Concerns over disinformation and the spread of far-right propaganda, in particular, drove numerous media outlets including The Guardian and popular newspapers in France, Sweden, Spain, and elsewhere to quit X this month, signaling growing resistance to Musk’s influence on media and political discourse.

New X rival Bluesky, a decentralized social platform, has exploded since the U.S. election, and is currently closing on 23 million subscribers—more than half of them arriving in the last month. In September, well before X’s murky role in the U.S. elections provoked what appears to be an even larger exodus, the Financial Times reported on a study, conducted using similarweb, showing that X had lost one-third of its users in the U.K. and nearly one-fifth in the U.S.