Twitter is dead; long live … X?
It’s been less than a week since Elon Musk rebranded his microblogging platform Twitter as X. As part of the shift, Musk replaced Twitter’s iconic blue bird with a stylized black-and-white X. The change rattled many users, who worry — following algorithmic changes and cutting thousands of staffers — that Musk is on his way to transforming their favorite platform beyond recognition.
But where does this leave the Twitter elite of Brussels, a city where no parliamentary discussion or Commission initiative can go by without a witty tweet and an attendant hail of sarcastic replies and barbed quotes?
Well, dear reader, we checked so you didn’t have to.
POLITICO reached out to some of the most active tweeters — Xers? — in the EU bubble to get their take on the big rebrand and Musk’s tweaks. Here’s what they told us:
Dave Keating, @DaveKeating, journalist, 53K followers
“Twitter has become an embarrassing place to be. Like if you saw a friend at a club that’s under new management, not cool anymore and people can feel it’s going out of business. You’d be saying to each other with your eyes, ‘Why are we still here?’ That’s how Twitter feels these days. Why do I still have this tab that says ‘verified’ when the people in it are not only not verified but also seem to be a collection of the cringiest people on Twitter?”
mepassistant, @mepassistants, meme-maker, 32.8K followers
“As far as the rebranding of Twitter into X is concerned, I hate it (even if it’s good material for memes), it’s edgy and will lead to much confusion (can’t wait to introduce myself as an X content creator). But I expect that the EU Bubble will continue to sail on this Titanic-shaped social media [platform] for the foreseeable future. We are all stuck on X because there is no equivalent on the market providing the same features with the same scale, but the day a serious equivalent appears on the market, Musk just made sure there would be no brand attachment to keep us on X.”
Valérie Hayer, @ValerieHayer, MEP, 18.5K followers
“In maths, X represents the unknown in the equation. It’s a telling symbol, in this case, of the vagueness into which Elon Musk enjoys plunging the Twittersphere. What will he do with Twitter? That’s the unknown. Here’s X.”
Jean Quatremer, @quatremer, EU correspondent for French news outlet Libération, 183.5K followers
“I think Twitter has become a kind of public service, a working tool for journalists and politicians: We shouldn’t have left it in the hands of Musk, whose emotional stability is increasingly questionable. I don’t understand why Europe doesn’t have its own social network: We could imagine a public network — which doesn’t mean state-controlled — like public television.”
Andrew Stroehlein, @astroehlein, media and editorial director at Human Rights Watch, 128.9K followers
“I don’t think it’s all down to Musk; he just accelerated changes that were happening already. I, too, use it less and less, because it just doesn’t do what I need an outreach tool to do anymore. As for ‘X,’ all I can say is, Y?”
Berlaymonster, @Berlaymonster, satirist, 25K followers
“Twitter is certainly less useful now, and some of that is down to the deterioration of the functionality under Musk’s ownership. But some of that must be down to us too, the users. Twitter has been around for a long time, and so have some of us. As we’ve got older and more cynical and less attractive, we’ve contributed to Twitter becoming older and more cynical and less attractive too.”
Andreas Schwab, @Andreas_Schwab, MEP, 8,499 followers
“Twitter had been quite a good platform for fast communication with journalists in the past. It looks like Elon Musk wants to turn the platform into some sort of cash machine with more advertisements and additional features. Not sure if it works. By getting rid of the name of ‘Twitter’ the company has lost a lot of value for investors.”
Le Chou News, @LeChouNews, satirical website, 32.5K followers
“It’s all been rather entertaining to see Elon get dunked on so catastrophically. I shifted a while ago from using Twitter as a resource for the job to more of a stress relief/distraction. I think it’s a real shame what has happened to it because I’ve built up a decent network of sources thanks to the old Twitter, but I don’t see that expanding at all now. In terms of alternatives, it’s difficult to allocate any mental bandwidth to it as it’s taken a long time to build the Twitter profile up. The idea of starting again isn’t appealing at all. If it becomes 100 percent pay-for or the toxic element manages to break through into the little bubble I’ve built for myself I’d probably delete the app, use the web version then forget about it.”
Stéphanie Yon-Courtin, @s_yoncourtin, MEP, 5,921 followers
“Musk’s strategy seems to be to degrade the platform’s services if we don’t opt for the paid service. I have doubts about this business strategy, especially when Twitter is seeing competition emerge with Meta. Consumers aren’t ready to pay through the nose for access to social networks, and if Twitter’s audience is weakening, the added value of being there may also follow the same trend … ”
Kai Zenner, @ZennerBXL, head of office for MEP Axel Voss, 2,532 followers
“For me Twitter is THE platform for exchanging opinions and new ideas, especially for the policy bubble. Why would you give up such a powerful brand for a Western form of WeChat that will likely flop?”
Ibán García del Blanco, @Ibangarciadb, MEP, 17.8K followers
“It’s getting worse every day. [There is] a lot of malfunctioning. I can’t exactly figure out what are the criteria for visibility. I was quite surprised about the new announcement [new name]. I can’t understand it because they were dealing with a very successful platform. I can’t understand the goal behind creating a new label.”
Connor Allen, @ConnorAllenEU, automotive lobbyist, 936 followers
“I’m probably the most pro-Elon person in Brussels but I don’t see any benefit to [the rebrand]. That being said, there aren’t any downsides to it either. You will have your usual band of politically unreasonable people claiming they will leave X over it, but they will be there next week, as they always are.”
Brando Benifei, @brandobenifei, MEP, 25.6K followers
“Elon Musk should use the new X to ‘tick the box’ of the European rules on fighting disinformation and on competition in the interest of consumers.”
A request for comment sent to X was returned with a form reply promising to respond “soon” — not with, as had been the company’s recent habit, a poop emoji.
Follower counts were correct as of July 27.