X (Formerly Twitter) has made plenty of questionable choices and hinted at the possibility of even more over the past few years. From hiding user likes to favoring paid subscribers to threatening to remove the block feature altogether, this and other factors have deterred many from using the app as frequently. Plenty have deleted it altogether.
If the app's CEO's recent comments are true, compared to previous Twitter reports.the average number of minutes spent on the app per user per day has actually gone down over the past year. It's much easier to make data sound impressive when you share it out of context, isn't it?
Here's a stat that blows my mind: Users spent 364 billion seconds on X last year. That's 11,500 years collectively 🤯🚀
— Linda Yaccarino (@lindayaX) January 14, 2025
While there are plenty of people (and bots) still spending plenty of time on Twitter these days, I'm thankfully not one of them. I still haven't taken the final step of deleting my account completely, but I don't check the app, post, or engage with other posts anymore. The last time I did open the app to check my messages -- for business reasons -- my inbox was absolutely filled with spam requests, no doubt all from bots.
I suppose it depends on which circles you're in, but in my case, most of the accounts I used to follow and interact with have since vanished. The people interested in the same things I'm interested in are no longer interested in Twitter, and I can't say I blame them. I'm going to open the app briefly and tell you the first few things I see.
A promoted ad for shoes, an ad for Grok, and a handful of "viral" tweets from accounts I've never heard of. It turns out I've lost nearly a thousand followers, likely mostly from people deleting their accounts. What I just saw leaves me even less interested in opening the app again in the future. What's the point?
It's no wonder people aren't spending as much time on Twitter as they used to. It has lost everything that made it appealing once. I won't miss it one bit.