A lot of people threaten to leave Twitter. Not many of them have actually done it.
This was true even before Elon Musk's purchase of the platform a year ago. But the parade of calamities since — cutting back on moderation, unplugging servers, reinstating banned accounts, replacing verified check marks with paid subscription badges, throttling access to news sites, blaming the Anti-Defamation League for a decline in advertising — has made stepping away more appealing, either because the timeline is toxic or because the site simply doesn't function the way it used to.
Last April, the company gave NPR a reason to quit — it labeled the network "U.S. state-affiliated media," a designation that was at odds with Twitter's own definition of the term. NPR stopped posting from its account on April 4. A week later, it posted its last update — a series of tweets directing users to NPR's newsletters, app, and other social media accounts. Many member stations across the country, including KUOW in Seattle, LAist in Los Angeles, and Minnesota Public Radio, followed suit.
Six months later, we can see that the effects of leaving Twitter have been negligible. A memo circulated to NPR staff says traffic has dropped by only a single percentage point as a result of leaving Twitter, now officially renamed X, though traffic from the platform was small already and accounted for just under two percent of traffic before the posting stopped. (NPR declined an interview request but shared the memo and other information). While NPR's main account had 8.7 million followers and the politics account had just under three million, "the platform's algorithm updates made it increasingly challenging to reach active users; you often saw a near-immediate drop-off in engagement after tweeting and users rarely left the platform," the memo says.
There's one view of these numbers that confirms what many of us in news have long suspected — that Twitter wasn't worth the effort, at least in terms of traffic. "It made up so little of our web traffic, such a marginal amount," says Gabe Rosenberg, audience editor for KCUR in Kansas City, which stopped posting to Twitter at the same time as NPR. But Twitter wasn't just about clicks. Posting was table stakes for building reputation and credibility, either as a news outlet or as an individual journalist. To be on Twitter was to be part of a conversation, and that conversation could inform stories or supply sources. During protests, especially, Twitter was an indispensable tool for following organizers and on-the-ground developments, as well as for communicating to the wider public. This kind of connection is hard to give up, but it's not impossible to replace.
[...] These strategies move publishers further away from seeing social media as a source of clicks. This could be a risky pivot away from traffic sources, given that NPR and many member stations have laid off staff or made other cuts due to declining revenues. But the social media clickthrough audience has never been guaranteed; a Facebook algorithm change this year also tanked traffic to news sites. Instead, recognizing that social media is not a key to clicks seems like a correction to years of chasing traffic through outside platforms.
There were signs of social media's waning importance before the Twitter sale as well as predictions that the era of social media-driven news is coming to an end. But changes to X in the last year have only accelerated these trends, underlining that social media is less rewarding to publishers and less fun for users than it used to be. "The quality of our engagement on the platform was also suffering" before April, Nett wrote in a followup email. "We were on average seeing fewer impressions and smaller reach on our tweets, despite keeping a similar publishing cadence. And I know this is anecdotal, but as someone looking at the account every day, spam replies were getting much more frequent — starting to overpower meaningful feedback and conversation from audiences." Musk's now-retracted relabeling of NPR could be seen as a last straw, or as an open door to leave a platform that had lost its utility.
By many estimates, active daily users on Twitter/X are in decline. Not everyone who leaves does it like NPR, in a flurry of headlines and with a final post pinned to their timeline. Instead, it's more mundane. They check less and less often, finding it less useful, less compelling. It's not easy to decide to back away; there's still a fear about leaving — a fear of missing out on a great conversation or a new joke. But as a platform becomes less reliable — either editorially or technically — staying becomes more fraught. And as NPR has demonstrated, you may not be giving up all that much if you walk away.
Related Stories
Blogger Ben Werdmuller has discussed an article in Nature about the political impact of the algorithm(s) used by X (formerly known as Twitter). The gist is that the use of the algorithms against X's users tends to shift about 5% of them in a specific direction. That's more than enough to tip an election one way or another especially since the damage seems persistent and lasts even after exposure ceases.
Feed algorithms are widely suspected to influence political attitudes. However, previous evidence from switching off the algorithm on Meta platforms found no political effects. Here we present results from a 2023 field experiment on Elon Musk's platform X shedding light on this puzzle. We assigned active US-based users randomly to either an algorithmic or a chronological feed for 7 weeks, measuring political attitudes and online behaviour. Switching from a chronological to an algorithmic feed increased engagement and shifted political opinion towards more conservative positions, particularly regarding policy priorities, perceptions of criminal investigations into Donald Trump and views on the war in Ukraine. In contrast, switching from the algorithmic to the chronological feed had no comparable effects. Neither switching the algorithm on nor switching it off significantly affected affective polarization or self-reported partisanship. To investigate the mechanism, we analysed users' feed content and behaviour. We found that the algorithm promotes conservative content and demotes posts by traditional media. Exposure to algorithmic content leads users to follow conservative political activist accounts, which they continue to follow even after switching off the algorithm, helping explain the asymmetry in effects. These results suggest that initial exposure to X's algorithm has persistent effects on users' current political attitudes and account-following behaviour, even in the absence of a detectable effect on partisanship.
It should be added that the effect has already been seen in multiple countries. For example, the elections in Turkey were affected with outright censorship, within X. And the impact from the CPP's Bytedance's Tiktok is likely even more severe, not to mention multiple experiments in manipulation in Meta's properties like Facebook.
Journal Reference: Gauthier, G., Hodler, R., Widmer, P. et al. The political effects of X's feed algorithm. Nature (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10098-2
Previously:
(2026) How Screwed is Generation Alpha, and the Generations Which Will Depend on Them?
(2025) European Union Orders X to Hand Over Algorithm Documents
(2024) Six Months Ago NPR Left Twitter. The Effects Have Been Negligible
(2023) Utah Sues Tiktok For Getting Children 'Addicted' To Its Algorithm
(2022) Leaked Documents Reveal Instagram Was Pushing Girls Towards Content That Harmed Mental Health
(2022) Musk Buying Twitter Is Not About Freedom of Speech
... and more
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Snotnose on Friday December 27 2024, @10:33PM (11 children)
Popular Science Fiction author, blog at https://whatever.scalzi.com/, [scalzi.com] he cut way back over the past year and last month cut all ties. According to him the negative effects were negligible.
Me? I've never had a Twitter account, nor do I follow anyone on it.
Trump's Grave will be the world's most popular open air toilet.
(Score: 2) by FunkyLich on Friday December 27 2024, @11:09PM (8 children)
Twitter? When was ever Twitter relevant anyways? Personally I literally don't know anyone at all who has/had Twitter or ever refered anything on Twitter, ever. I know many who use and talk about Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, Whatsapp, Telegram. But zero Twitter.
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Saturday December 28 2024, @12:39AM (6 children)
I'm not sure, I remember early on there was a lot of discussion of what it was even for. I seem to remember the folks over at Penny Arcade suggesting that it was for tweeting your bowel movements. And there used to be a great account from the mime that would log in to periodically post "...".
But, really, the whole thing never made that much sense as the limit early on was short enough to fit into a text message, but it was like this massive group text where pretty much anybody could hop on. And even when you can select reasonable people to add to group texts, they often times have so many issues, even without randos showing up to troll.
It's a format that could be somewhat useful for status reports on what you're home automation stuff is up to, but anything much more involved that that really depends on a much longer message length than whatever it is that they eventually lengthened it to.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday December 28 2024, @03:08PM (3 children)
So many MySpaces and Geocities today...
Are the Republicans really in favor of genocide, or are they just cowards terrified of terrorist twit Trump?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aafcac on Saturday December 28 2024, @04:52PM (2 children)
Take that back, Geocities at least had some stuff of value.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Sunday December 29 2024, @07:09PM (1 child)
True, but like the entire internet today, most of what was there was garbage.
Are the Republicans really in favor of genocide, or are they just cowards terrified of terrorist twit Trump?
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Sunday December 29 2024, @08:09PM
Yes, but at least it was garbage by regular people who were either just messing around or going after smaller audiences. It wasn't being shaped by ridiculous algorithms designed to extract as much rent as possible via scam ads and malware.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by One Time Use on Saturday December 28 2024, @08:32PM (1 child)
Only use I found was as a song request mechanism for a DJ (disk jockey) bot that I wrote circa 2009. It accepted song requests via Twitter and queued up mp3s.
It worked okay as a way for people at a party to influence the music selection. But, people often don't know the name of a song, just a catchy part of the lyrics. And they're lousy spellers...especially if they've been drinking.
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Saturday December 28 2024, @09:38PM
That might work a bit better these days as an AI program could probably work out a lot of the common lyrics that people use to refer to songs. It kind of surprises me sometimes that while a bunch of songs do have their name somewhere in the song, it's not universal and a bunch of songs wind up with a parenthetical to include the unofficial name that listeners use.
(Score: 5, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 28 2024, @02:01AM
jan 6th.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday December 28 2024, @03:06PM (1 child)
I've never had a Twitter account, nor do I follow anyone on it.
Me, either, although I had a Farsebook account for years. I deleted the account last year when they announced that they owned everything you posted and were going to use it to train their AI. I see anything on Fakebook that matches anything I've registered copyright on (you now need it for an ISBN) and I'm suing the shit out of them. Not anyone posting to inform or amuse, just those making money with what I made without compensating me.
Illinois just passed a law outlawing social media's using posts to train AI (according to the meanstream news), so I may get back on when it takes effect next week. Haven't decided. Thoughts?
As to eX-twitter, I wasn't on it before the Space Nazi bought it and I'm damned sure not to get on now!
Has anyone else noticed that Social Media and Sado-Masochism share the same acronym?
Are the Republicans really in favor of genocide, or are they just cowards terrified of terrorist twit Trump?
(Score: 5, Funny) by The Vocal Minority on Sunday December 29 2024, @07:40AM
I think your comparison of Social Media and Sado-Masochism highly questionable. One is a brutal dehumanising practice that can lead to life-long emotional trauma, and the other a bit of kinky fun with whips and chains.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by SomeGuy on Friday December 27 2024, @11:05PM
Twitter has been overrated since day one. The lack of effect of its demise will only surprise those that bought in to the hype.
We have finally gotten to the point where the TV news no longer proudly proclaims that someone "posted on Twitter (R)(TM)" rather than just "posted on social media".
It has never made sense for any sizable business to ONLY post their content exclusively on Twitter, or treating a tiny social media post as an authoritative source. But every day it was some bigwig twat "announced on Twitter(R)(TM)...".
Now if the AI hype would finally die...
(Score: 5, Interesting) by dwilson98052 on Saturday December 28 2024, @12:24AM
....fuck twitter.
I had an account, paid for the little check mark and all... then one day they flagged my account as a "bot" account despite me rarely posting anything at all.
They said my account was "hacked" despite using a long random complex password, and said the same thing after setting up 2FA.
Eventually all of my followers and everybody I followed started getting deleted and my posts were all auto deleted.
I opened no less than a dozen cases asking for help and never got anything other than "reset your password" then they'd close the ticket.
I've spoken to others who it has happened to, so I know I'm not the only one.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Saturday December 28 2024, @01:29AM
Yeah but that means they went from 2% to 1%. Half the NPR listeners simply vanished, just like that - all 12 of them!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bussdriver on Saturday December 28 2024, @01:36AM (2 children)
The real impact is the staff of media orgs are addicted to social media and waste our OUR time on stuff they found on it. If it's popular there, don't use your tiny platform to promote it further; do your job and don't fish your addiction for easy content. The egos of these people are too huge for them to not be obsessed with what everybody is saying about them and social media is designed to exploit that desire; which these media types have an extra "affinity" towards gossip related to themselves.
(Score: 5, Informative) by janrinok on Saturday December 28 2024, @02:00PM (1 child)
As I have repeated many times - this site relies on YOUR submissions. If you don't like what you are reading you have the power to change that.
The community can discuss lots of different topics if you will submit something on them. Your hobbies, your profession, in fact anything that we can link however tenuously to STEM. We can also publish some stories under the Random topic. Alternatively, put something on any topic at all in your journal. If people are interested then they will join in the discussion.
The editors would certainly welcome new material.
[nostyle RIP 06 May 2025]
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Sunday December 29 2024, @08:11PM
I'd kind of love to see the complainers' reaction if you guys give up and just have an AI generate all of the summaries to feed to Arthur.
(Score: 2) by Dr Spin on Saturday December 28 2024, @09:11AM
No Positive results?
Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DadaDoofy on Saturday December 28 2024, @01:32PM
I think it not too big a stretch to realize today's users of X are not interested in much of anything NPR has to say, hence the negligible effect of NPR's exit. I think they have a better chance of increasing traffic by posting on a site like Bluesky. Yes, Bluesky has just 5% of X's user base, but it's an audience buying what NPR is selling.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 28 2024, @03:42PM (6 children)
Over on the left panel, toward the bottom of the list is a link to Twitter. When I click it, the new tab flashes the SN logo, but then quickly (and somewhat amateurishly) jumps to an X.com login screen.
From memory (before X and login requirement) this page echoed the front page headlines on the SN home page--maybe it still does?
This is (imo) VERY LOW PRIORITY given all the other things to do at SN, just putting it out for thought:
Now that we/SN are under our own management and all, do we want to keep sending our headlines to X?
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Saturday December 28 2024, @04:05PM (3 children)
I have 2 views on this at the moment. But first, out priority was to get the site working again. Kolie set to and transferred everything that he could, including probably things that we might not need in the future. Having a debate about 'should we copy this or not' for each part of the site would have taken far too much time and required software changes that were unnecessary to keep us online.
Now back to your main question. For the moment I welcome any publicity that we can get. Our community needs to grow and I don't think that having our logo on Xitter is going to harm the site and it might actually bring someone new to look at it. Who knows?
Do I think that we should continue well into the future with the Xitter link? That is not a decision for me to make. The site belongs to you. If a small group of our community are using Xitter (and maybe do not want to admit it in public) then it might be serving a purpose. We don't currently count the number of clicks that we get on the item in the menu, so I don't know the answer to that. Nevertheless, if the community want it removed then that is also possible, but as you acknowledge it is way down the list of things that we need to do now.
I would like to see soft deletes being made available and more clarity on how such decisions are being made, but that has to be done without taking away any of the existing security measures that are necessary to protect the site. Replacing them with better alternative software is a great idea. We just need to know that we have a working replacement before we disable what we already have. Kolie has also been looking at some additional security measures. Finally, with the appropriate security measures it is entirely possible that ACs could return to the main stories and that is something that I think the overwhelming majority would like to see.
[nostyle RIP 06 May 2025]
(Score: 3, Flamebait) by https on Saturday December 28 2024, @05:11PM (2 children)
It's not hard to understand that X has become a Nazi Bar.
If supporting Nazis is the cost of new eyeballs, then fuck new eyeballs and maybe we deserve to shrink.
Quick joke that's not a joke: What's the difference these days between a Nazi and a neo-Nazi?
One has realized that branding matters in the modern world.
Offended and laughing about it.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Saturday December 28 2024, @05:17PM
Well, start a discussion in your journal and see what everyone else thinks. That is what we have a community for. It is not your sole opinion nor mine that matters. The majority of votes in the last election suggested that it is exactly what they want to the USA to become.
Or you can complain and whinge but do nothing about it. It is YOUR site. Do something.
[nostyle RIP 06 May 2025]
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 28 2024, @07:42PM
Comparing "Triumph of the Will" to internet clips of a MAGA rally, who has the branding as perfect as it gets? Are you afraid that today's right-wing nutjobs might get better at it?
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 29 2024, @11:49AM (1 child)
As opposed to what, gatekeeping to make sure we only get progressives?
Guess that would prevent needing to get the site working; their whole focus in life seems to be keeping people out or silenced anyway.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Sunday December 29 2024, @12:10PM
How many people do you think are 'being kept out' or 'silenced'?
We have 9 recent new members who have all successfully created accounts.
If you think that prostitutes from Delhi or perhaps users with nicknames like " Earn money now btoorfgikten.blogspo p", "Make big money sezobnachalsa.blogsp t", or perhaps "greedy cocksuckers" are genuine accounts then please feel free to create your own site and I can give them your URL.
Or maybe you believe that comments like this have a place on our site (It has been posted over 50 times) ?
I'm don't think that the community have missed anything insightful or illuminating by removing this sort of Spam. If you want it on the Main Stories get the community to vote for it and I will gladly let it appear all over the front pages again.
[nostyle RIP 06 May 2025]