Damn, Musk may have more children than actual followers. https://t.co/uKv2SZY0QS
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) August 19, 2023
“Of the 153,209,283 X accounts following Musk…around 42% of Musk's followers, or more than 65.3 million users, have zero followers… Just over 72%, or nearly 112 million, of these users following Musk have less than 10 followers on their account.” https://t.co/8AByMcfd4k
— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) August 18, 2023
… Mashable has reviewed new data collected by third-party researcher Travis Brown, who compiled basic account information on all of Musk’s more than 153 million followers via a meticulous process that respected X’s rate limit parameters…
Of the 153,209,283 X accounts following Musk at the time the data was collected, around 42 percent of Musk’s followers, or more than 65.3 million users, have zero followers on their own account. Just over 72 percent, or nearly 112 million, of these users following Musk have less than 10 followers on their account.
When it comes to content creation on the platform, more than 62.5 million Musk followers have zero tweets. This would include users who have deleted all of their tweets by the time this data was collected over the past few weeks as well as accounts that have never before tweeted. More than 100 million Musk followers have less than 10 tweets posted to their account.
Another very interesting detail from Musk’s follower data is exactly when his followers created their accounts. Musk completed his acquisition of Twitter on October 27, 2022. Out of all of Musk’s current followers, more than 25 percent, or 38.9 million, were created on or after that date…
Are Musk’s followers fake?
All of the above data points could signal fake accounts, describe users who are inactive, or even “lurkers” — users who exclusively consume content. It’s likely a combination of all three. However, there are a few further stats that point more to the former two types of users…An X Premium (aka Twitter Blue) revelation
One last data point of note is just how many of Musk’s followers subscribe to X Premium, Musk’s $8 per month paid subscription service formerly known as Twitter Blue. Musk has routinely promoted the product from his account, focusing on the premium features that come with it like the verification badge or monetization eligibility. A subscription to X Premium has often been associated with personal support for Musk himself by the platform’s users.However, according to this latest collection of @ElonMusk follower data, only around 453,000 Musk followers or 0.3 percent subscribe to X Premium. Mashable reported earlier this week that there were around 830,000 X Premium subscribers in total based on another data set compiled by Brown…
Not a tech expert, but if Musk (or more likely his misfortunate remaining employees) are bulk-buying bot accounts, at least they’re not wasting extra money on active accounts.
To put this is perspective:
Musk could have paid 150m people $8 a month to follow him for an entire year.
And saved $30 billion dollars. https://t.co/XuP31Q3WBw
— Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (@padresj) August 18, 2023
It does probably explain the Friday-news-dump ‘announcement’ that X-Twitter will be disabling the BLOCK feature. From everything I’ve seen, such an action would get X-Twitter kicked off all the most widely-used apps, even if he had the staff to go through with his announcement, which he almost certainly doesn’t. But it *did* serve as a distraction for all the media people who still depend on X-Twitter for their livelihoods, as well as broadcasting His Lordship’s imperial displeasure.
The thing you have to understand about Musk is that more than anything else, he is personally offended if he is not the main character.
While he is cool with white supremacists, he would press a button killing every other white person in an instant if everyone knew it was him.
— Starfish Unexpectedly Cancelled For Hating Hitler (@IRHotTakes) August 18, 2023
I don't think Elon bought Twitter to destroy it.
It's like the Mark Z. fight.
He tricked himself into thinking he wanted it.
He then shit his pants.
And then he tried to punish everyone who noticed his tricking himself into shitting his own pants.
— L O L G O P (@LOLGOP) August 19, 2023
Yutsano
Can this asshole do something right in his life for once and, y’know, stop breathing?
EDIT: FRIST! Although not sure how good that is on an Elmu thread.
Jerzy Russian
Christ, what a DeSantis!
karen marie
I am only surprised that every account isn’t automatically made to follow Musk.
My guess is a motivator behind Musk’s ill-conceived declaration he was removing the block feature was he found out how many accounts block him. That number probably equals or exceeds the number of accounts that follow him.
Odie Hugh Manatee
I heard that Shitter’s app store downloads are down because it seems that people have never heard of X so why download it?
Would be hilarious if true…lol!
MobiusKlein
@Yutsano:
It’s bad. Don’t do it again.
Villago Delenda Est
After reading through, the image of Gollum telling someone that nobody likes them and they have no friends came instantly to mind.
HumboldtBlue
I hereby formally request, the management of this here blog, swear henceforth to never run a Saturday night thread on Elon Musk.
We, the undersigned, would much rather enjoy a themed, or non-themed, open thread instead of a week’s worth of Muskiness distilled into a front page spot when a party could be happening instead.
Let the dog speak.
frosty
@HumboldtBlue: I endorse this message. It’s bad enough that I will have to read about one narcissist, TFG, incessantly for the next year+ because of the trials, but please spare me from this narcissist. Sure there’s schadenfreude in reading about how he’s shooting himself in the dick day after day, but I don’t really care.
Of course, one option is to not read the posts and not comment on them, right? Oops!!
smike
@frosty:
Just think of it as your Civic Doody to tolerate this state of affairs.
Ishiyama
Think how little we would know of that man if he hadn’t persisted in de-pantsing himself publicly, repeatedly.
piratedan
I await the not so ironic notice when Elon dies at the hand of one of his self-driving cars when it takes him into the direct path of one of his improperly outgassing rocket launches.
Ruckus
@Jerzy Russian:
Christ, what a DeSantis!
OK, I got a good chuckle out of that.
And it was worth repeating!
Ruckus
@Ishiyama:
I heard that after de-pantsing himself we found out how little…..
Anne Laurie
Much more likely, my best guess? He suffers a late-night fatal incident after combining a batch of ‘top shelf secret formula neuroenhancer‘ drugs, and then making the mistake of reading the replies to his latest Twit-scretion. His body isn’t found for some hours, because his ‘friends’ have better places to party, and he’s cut the janitorial staff down into muscle and bone.
Question is, once that happens, do his panicked ‘investors’ try and keep up a Weekend-at-Bernie’s charade? How long might such a conspiracy suceed, considering the potential partners are all publicity-crazed morons doing too many neurobiologics themselves?
Most importantly, how badly is the economy affected by the subsequent crash of a *major* percentage of Silicon Valley projects, including their political projects?
lgerard
As the deadline for Donald Trump to surrender for booking in Georgia looms, online sportsbooks are going wild with proposition bets on everything from his tie color to his body weight at booking.
I’m going with 290
bjacques
Well, you did say Open Thread…
Because of the time difference, I missed Bill Barr’s redemption tour. Any time is a good time to remember that good Catholic ensuring the execution of 13 prisoners on federal death row—even some with appeals pending—three on his way out the door.
https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2020/12/23/william-barr-federal-executions-catholic-death-penalty-239582
EDIT: And Trump letting that happen outweighs the one good thing he did, that I offer up when engaging his followers, which was to inexplicably work with the Innocence Project, and pardon or commute the sentences of several Black people unjustly imprisoned.
NotMax
830,000 × $8 = $6,640,000 per month. $79.680,000 per annum.
On the one hand, drop (maybe two drops) in the bucket for X’s bottom line. On the other hand, it’s ain’t exactly chump change.
JaySinWA
I think it would be interesting to have an X-Twitter diaspora post every once in a while, so people can say if they are going, where to, and why. My nym links to my mastodon presence on universeodon. I’ve been on CounterSocial and Spoutable. Looked at Post, and waiting on a bluesky invite. Mostly used Twitter for breaking news feeds, and it isn’t quite dead yet, and nothing else seems to be replacing it yet.
NotMax
@HumboldtBlue
Seconded. One Maldumb X post per week can more than suffice (if we must have any at all), and not constantly
relegated todumped on the late night crew.JaySinWA
@Odie Hugh Manatee: Google’s play store brings up X when you search for Twitter, but just lists X corp as the author. Google does send you to similar apps if the one you are looking for isn’t available for your device, so it’s possible people skip over it, and they may not recognise it if it is one advertised instead of searched for.
Twitter.com and x.com both map to X so bookmarks still work and I hadn’t noticed the redirect in my web browser until I looked for it. OTOH how many people looking for Twitter are oblivious of the name change? I guess they might lose people who would respond to an ad to download Twitter but not X because they aren’t using it now and having heard the news, so maybe a small number of downloads not happening because of lack of name recognition in the rebranding, but I don’t see it.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@JaySinWA:
Thanks! It was a news post on my Mastodon instance where I saw it. If it’s real it will pop back up again soon as that would be big news if true.
Princess
I enjoy the late night Musk threads. They’re Schadenfreudelicious. And they’re always open so anyone with a more interesting topic on conversation can shift the talk away from Musk in the comments. Rather than, y’know, requiring the posters to do it for you.
satby
@HumboldtBlue: @NotMax: Well, sourpusses; it’s still an important story and still the main platform where breaking news is dispersed, especially internationally. It’s the main venue the Ukrainian fighters are using to get their messages out, for example. Just the replies saying people have tried Post, mastodon, spoutible, blue sky, etc. show there’s still no consensus replacement to the thing that worked as a news / town square / emergency alert system for a world wide audience yet. And whether that affects you personally or not, it’s been tragic for some communities. I appreciate AL’s posts on everything, honestly, compared to some of the inanity put out here in this blog lately, but we’re always told to just scroll on and skip what we don’t like, so try that.
Geminid
@satby: I’ve been engrossed in Turkish Twitter for a while now. Those people are interested in a lot of things but the state of Twitter is not one of them.
lowtechcyclist
@bjacques:
Guess he’s one of those “cafeteria Catholics” that the more conservative Catholics deride.
Ken
I momentarily expected this to conclude “with an attempt at do-it-yourself surgery to implant one of his Neuralink brain chips”
EDIT: I see the FDA reversed itself and approved human trials!?! His blue-check followers might want to read the “revised terms of service” carefully.
WereBear
@lowtechcyclist: It’s about exerting their personal power on everybody and those medieval Catholics had that down pat.
moonbat
@satby: Seconded.
AL does us the service of contextualizing the news she puts out there. Lately half the other posts amount to “BREAKING! Argle-gargle! Figure it out for yourself!”
Besides, it’s not like most threads aren’t pulled off topic within the first 25 comments anyway.
IOW, lighten up.
zhena gogolia
@moonbat: Yes, we really should cut the salaries of those front-pagers who don’t bother to contextualize the news for us.
Freemark
@zhena gogolia: Yep I say cut in half or even by 3/4. And if they promise to do a better job offer to increase by it 100x.
moonbat
@zhena gogolia:
Kind of my point. AL does a better job of running this blog on a day in day out basis for zero salary than many of the other posters. To bash her for not posting on your preferred topic is sort of looking a gift horse in the mouth.
satby
😂😂 Well, still rather have that than paragraphs explaining, as to a five year old, something I can read for myself. Because treating us as backward children is a style, I guess.
trnc
I’ve always assumed that was done cynically to ingratiate himself with POC. That would be in line with most (if not all) other pardons that were completely self serving.
ETA: Probably understood, but proper pardons are good no matter what his actual motivation was.
zhena gogolia
@moonbat: Fine. I never bash AL. But let’s not bash other front-pagers in the process.
zhena gogolia
Wow, passive aggressive much?
Omnes Omnibus
@satby: Every person who posts here, front pager or commenter, has their own style and quirks.
Redshift
@karen marie:
Maybe, but I also wouldn’t be surprised if it’s because the garbage people he listens to are complaining about their reduced “reach” from so many people blocking them. Because they’re garbage people. And its making xitter look bad in stats overall, because he’s caused it to be (more) full of garbage people.
satby
@zhena gogolia: really? Did I namecheck anyone? It can apply to more than one person.
@Omnes Omnibus: hence the constant refrain to skip posts, which I do. As directed.
UncleEbeneezer
@HumboldtBlue: So say we all!!! (just kidding, AL and other FPers can obviously write whatever they want)
Anonymous At Work
I snorted hot coffee out my nose on this story. So awesome.
SFAW
@HumboldtBlue:
Maybe they can switch to famous liberal Glenn Greenwald.