The Byte: Change to Twitter Suggests Elon Musk Is Panicking Over Users Leaving for Bluesky

[Dennis Donovan]

The Byte - Change to Twitter Suggests Elon Musk Is Panicking Over Users Leaving for Bluesky

He's scared.

Nov 27, 5:16 PM EST
by Victor Tangermann

Nothing to See
X owner Elon Musk appears to be spooked by the continuous flow of users leaving the social media platform in favor of alternatives like BlueSky and Meta's Threads.

In a surprising move last week, Musk announced that the platform would start allowing users to hide likes, shares, and reposts — a suspicious decision that feels like a bid to conceal the platform's waning energy.

"You can now hide engagement buttons and numbers below each post and interact with posts through custom swipe gestures!" X app developer May Ly tweeted last week.

Musk himself resorted to an odd excuse for the new feature.

"It's much cleaner with engagement numbers turned off," he wrote. "You can still see view count if you care."

/snip

[Klarkashton]

1. It's time has finally passed. It took a while but it's

Passe.

[RedWhiteBlueIsRacist]

2. X getting elonely, huh Elon?

[OAITW r.2.0]

3. Is jack Dorsey the money person behind Bluesky? Will he resell his creation to Elon Musk again?

[Cha]

8. From what I've read Jack Dorsey is no

longer involved in BlueSky.

Yes, Jack Dorsey is no longer involved with Bluesky, the decentralized social media platform he co-founded in 2019. Dorsey resigned from the board in 2024 and stopped posting on the platform in 2023.

I found it on Goggle.. the link is too long to post.

[LSparkle]

4. Glad to see people leaving the X cesspool

Elon lost his place at the popular kids’ table 🥲🥲🥲

[JI7]

5. This shows our side has some influence.

I would also bet a lot of people left just becsuse xitter started to suck.

I never signed on to it but I would check out other people's pages sometimes and it just seemed like comments were full of trolls and spammers.

[Wicked Blue]

6. The power of the pocketbook

Boycotts can be effective

[Cha]

7. That sounds Stupid... I don't care GFY, muskhead.

[Baitball Blogger]

9. Fuck you Musk.

And welcome to Sir Isaac Newton's third law of motion. I'll condense it for you: What goes around comes around.

[ProfessorGAC]

11. Isaac Newton's Theory Of Relativity?

That's Einstein's theory; 170 years after Nrwton died.
I think you meant gravity, as relativity doesn't have much to do with going around & coming around.

[Baitball Blogger]

12. I even double checked on google.

Just came back from Thanksgiving. I feel like a bloated whale.

Thanks for the correction.

[ProfessorGAC]

14. I Didn't Overeat

I'm not a fan of Thanksgiving fare, but my wife wanted traditional.
So, we had that. I ate enough to satiate, and that's it.
There's some benefit to not thinking much of turkey.

[Baitball Blogger]

16. Turkey wasn't on the menu.

We had Kobe's. Unfortunately, they serve the fried rice and noodles first. I was sabotaged.

[Baitball Blogger]

13. It was the third law of motion.

Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Newton.

[ProfessorGAC]

15. Yep!

That's the one!

[TheBlackAdder]

10. Perhaps certain people's tweets seem to garnish suspiciously high like counts in a brief period of time.

This way, those people can have their posts elevated and stand out while masking the failure of X as a whole.