★ X Once Again Marks the Spot

Upon taking the CEO helm last month, John Ternus began tweeting on X. He tweeted “hello”, posted an iPhone event eve teaser and then a promo video for the new products, celebrated Apple’s plethora of wins at the Emmys and launch day on Fifth Avenue, and commemorated the anniversary of Steve Jobs’s death.

X is the only place these posts go. Same for Greg Joswiak’s account. Lighthearted stuff too, like Cook “introducing” Ternus to Pikachu back in August. You may not like it that X has re-found its footing under Elon Musk’s ownership, but it has. I’m citing Apple executives here but they’re far from alone. There are hundreds of interesting people and accounts I follow that post on X very regularly and do not post anywhere else at all. As a word nerd I love Merriam-Webster’s account — fun, clever, smart posts every day. That’s just one example among hundreds. Here’s another. Fascinating new apps are being shown and discussed on X and nowhere else.

I see more interesting posts on X than I do on Threads, Bluesky, and Mastodon combined. I wish that weren’t so but it is. Most people don’t want to think about politics so they don’t. Those people, when they want to participate in a Twitter-like social network, go to X.

And I can’t blame anyone. The only network that compares to X, size-wise, is Threads — but Threads’s algorithm is weirder than X’s now, and the content I see there is relatively boring. My Threads timeline is full of engagement bait without being engaging. And if you want to judge a platform by its owner, “I’m grossed out and/or appalled by Elon Musk so I’m going to Mark Zuckerberg’s joint” isn’t a way to avoid being grossed out and/or appalled by the owner. Bluesky and Mastodon are too small for most people to care about — and, worse, they are the networks where politics are, in my experience, unavoidable. You can have a discussion about cool new use cases and tools for AI on X and people just discuss the tools and use cases. On Bluesky and Mastodon it’s difficult to have such discussions without arguments from people who (a) believe all use of AI is unethical, and (b) will shove their viewpoints into your replies.

The culture on X today is remarkably friendly and inclusive. It is a cheerful place. That cheerfulness is another differentiator. If you believe the world is falling apart and doomed only to get worse, that our obvious and real problems cannot be surmounted, X is not the platform for you. If you think the world is full of fun and amazing people and things, that humanity’s defining feature is our collective ability to solve any problem, that the only time better to be alive than today is tomorrow, it might be.

If you have stayed away, or even just mostly away, from X for years and then come back, people just say things like “Hey, glad you’re back!” On the other networks, especially Mastodon, they tell you you’re “feeding Nazis” — by going to the platform where Tim Cook posts Pikachu videos. These people have either lost their minds or refuse to check their prior assumptions. (Most of the ones who chime in about it publicly are the lost-their-minds types.)

But the bigger problem is that there’s little action on Bluesky or, especially, Mastodon. There’s a lot of activity on Threads, but little action. There is action on X. I’ve said for years that Mastodon is my favorite of the bunch and in a way it still is, but really that’s because when I go there I don’t have to be diligent to avoid wasting time. I avoid wasting time on Mastodon because there’s so little of interest to see. That’s a feature — for me — but it certainly isn’t what most people are looking for in a Twitter-like posting platform. They want action. The action is on X.

Without any fanfare — perhaps to avoid his ire — X has de-Musked its algorithm. I stopped visiting at all when the algorithm there was putting Musk’s own tweets into my timeline, every time I checked, despite the fact that I never followed him. But they don’t do that anymore. I don’t see much politics of any kind in my timeline, and what I do see is from accounts I chose to follow. I see tech (including a lot of interesting breaking news), sports (including a lot of interesting videos and stats), and stupid stuff that’s actually funny. My only problem with X now is that I do have to pay attention to avoid wasting time when I visit.

Plus, in addition to the tweets, there are now many interesting people using X to post entire essays and blog posts. I wish that weren’t so, for multiple reasons (e.g., no RSS). But it is so.

If you returned from exile on a desert island and took a look at X today for the first time in a year, you might reasonably guess that Elon Musk got bored and sold it while you were away. I do think he got bored micromanaging it, but the rank muskiness that permeated the platform after he took over is — for now, at least — gone.