[philipdavis]

I guess those smart, insightful people are staying on X because

- their targeting audience are on X

- they are rich and do not really care what the platform owner does

- they will be very happy to join the owner when offered such opportunities

For people who are the target audience of those people, I guess

- they voted for this, and they are happily watching the federal gov falling apart

- they convinced themselves that X is the place to grow / learn from smart and insightful people (I don't think one has to be on it for more than 10 min a day to grow & learn, unless one is a crypto trader)

- they convinced themselves that it is really nothing political about using X

[account42]

- They realize that the owners of other platforms that are actually used aren't any better, including the previous owners and leadership of Twitter.

- They reject outrage and cancel culture and refuse to engage in performative posturing that ultimatively achieves nothing.

[handoflixue]

Are you actually curious, or did you just want an excuse for your pre-scripted soap box rant?

It's a mix of indie artists, old friends, and a few people who still think it's worthwhile to try and do outreach, fight against disinformation, etc.. I'm really not sure why you feel such an urge to insult people you've never met, but it's extremely rude and does nothing productive.

> nothing political about using X

I use an ad-blocker, don't have a paid account, and have 0 followers. What benefit do you think Elon Musk is getting here?

I dare say your grocery bill is responsible for supporting far more evil than anything I'm engaged in here.

[crusty]

"I use an ad-blocker, don't have a paid account, and have 0 followers. What benefit do you think Elon Musk is getting here?"

This is basically my interaction from the beginning - a lurker account if you will, with occasional comments. And I rarely used it because I could just add easily pull up a profile and see a user's posts. But then the profile page presentation changed. Often, it seems to force a login, and if it doesn't, it randomizes the post order, so the latest posts are buried, and some random posts from the Twitter era are at the top.

So now we have to be logged in just to lurk. We're not seeing ads or driving conversations, but if I'm following users, I'm a point of incentivizing for them to stay. Small point? For sure, but I'm part of the aggregate. And even without following anyone, we're also a userbase metric for Twitter. We add to the daily active user count, monthly active user count, and now that everyone has to have an account to even view a profile's posts in chronological order, we're all are in that artifically grown general claim of user count.

No, we are not actively shoveling ad revenue at Musk, but our continued presence is definitely useful for him and X when they pitch the platform to advertisers or try to get a better ad rate. More active users > more ad reach, even if we'll never actually see the ad > more money for X > more money for Elon.

I haven't deleted that X account, but i don't visit on my own or log in anymore. I refuse to give him even the value of my interaction metrics.