The year of introspection on social media: Threads and X are created, Twitter dies, and AI becomes more human

We acquired X and lost Twitter. Well, some of us tried out Mastodon and Bluesky. We were concerned about teenage mental health and AI bots. Like we used to do years ago, we curled up in private conversations and browsed endlessly. 2023 was a year of starts and goodbyes for social media users, interspersed with some introspection.

Here’s a recap of some of the most popular social media articles from 2023, along with some predictions for the following year:

RIP, TWITTER
A little over a year ago, Elon Musk stormed into Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters, sacked the company’s CEO and many other high-ranking officials, and started turning the social media network into what is now called X.

In July, Musk unveiled the X logo. It swiftly took the place of Twitter’s name and its wacky blue bird logo on the company’s website and at its San Francisco offices.

Musk said on the website, “And soon we shall bid adieu to the Twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds.”

Twitter has always had a disproportionate impact on popular culture because of its public character and the fact that it draws journalists, public personalities, and other high-profile users. However, this effect seems to be decreasing.

According to Insider Intelligence social media expert Jasmine Enberg, “It had a lot of problems even before Musk took it over, but it was a beloved brand with a clear role in the social media landscape.” “There are still magical moments on Twitter, such as when reporters use the site to provide developments in real time about the turmoil surrounding OpenAI, and many users still find significance in the tiny groups on the network. However, the Twitter of the previous 17 years has almost disappeared, and it’s unclear why X exists.

Following Musk’s acquisition, X has faced several accusations of bigotry and false information, incurred large losses in advertising, and seen a decrease in use. When Musk launched into an expletives-filled tirade against corporations that had stopped investing in X during an on-stage interview, it didn’t help. Musk said that marketers who left were subject to “blackmail” and effectively warned them to go away by using foul language.

Following the precedent set by the previous Twitter, which banned users for hate speech or disseminating false information, Musk reinstated conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’s X account in December. He did this by citing an unreliable poll he shared with his followers, which supported the Infowars host, who had repeatedly claimed that the Sandy Hook school shooting in 2012 was a hoax.

Meanwhile, LGBTQ and other groups that advocate for vulnerable people have been warning about X’s decreasing safety. For example, it discreetly lifted a ban on the “targeted misgendering or deadnaming of transgender individuals” in April. GLAAD, an advocacy organization, referred to Facebook as “the most dangerous platform for LGBTQ people” in June.

In December, the LGBTQ education organization GLSEN declared its departure from X and its affiliation with other organizations like the nonprofit Trevor Project, which works to prevent suicide. The organization claimed that Musk’s modifications “have birthed a new platform that enables its users to harass and target the LGBTQ+ community without restriction or discipline.”

HI X. AND THREADS. Moreover, Bluesky
One of Musk’s goals for X is to make the platform an “everything app,” similar to WeChat in China, for example. The issue? It’s unclear whether Western and American viewers will find the concept appealing. Furthermore, Musk hasn’t been very clear about the details.

While X struggles with his identification, other people start searching for someone else. One competitor was Mastodon, while Bluesky—a pet project of former CEO Jack Dorsey, who remains a director of the company—was another. Bluesky really emerged from Twitter.

According to CEO Jay Graber, the app only had tens of thousands of developers when frustrated Twitter users started registering for the (still) invite-only Bluesky in the spring.

According to her, this required “scrambling to add features that we had on the roadmap, scrambling to keep everything working, and keeping people online.” The task consisted of only “scaling” for weeks to make sure the systems could manage the load.

“There were memes about Paul against all of Twitter’s engineers, and we had one person on the app for a while, which was very funny,” she recounted. “I don’t believe we brought on a second app developer until after the insane expansion spike.”

Recognizing a chance to entice unhappy Twitter users, Facebook parent company Meta introduced Threads, a competitor, in July. Tens of millions of people signed up, and it immediately became very popular. However, it hasn’t always been easy to keep users on. Then, in a surprise move in December, CEO of Meta Mark Zuckerberg revealed that the company was testing interoperability, the idea that people should be able to use their accounts on different platforms, similar to your email address or phone number, as promoted by Mastodon, Bluesky, and other decentralized social networks.

In December, Mark Zuckerberg wrote on Threads, “Starting a test where posts from Threads accounts will be available on Mastodon and other services that use the ActivityPub protocol.” “Making Threads interoperable will let content reach a wider audience and allow users greater control over how they engage. I have a good feeling about this.

WORRIES ABOUT MENTAL HEALTH
The U.S. Surgeon General warned in May that there is insufficient evidence to support the safety of social media for kids and teens, and he urged tech companies, parents, and caregivers to take “immediate action to protect kids now.” This marked a sea change in the conversation about social media’s impact on children’s mental health.

Dr. Vivek Murthy told The Associated Press, “We’re asking parents to manage a rapidly evolving technology that fundamentally changes how their kids think about themselves, how they build friendships, how they experience the world— and technology, by the way, that prior generations never had to manage.” And it’s just unfair that we’re placing all of it on parents’ shoulders.

Numerous U.S. states filed a lawsuit against Meta in October, alleging that the company intentionally and knowingly created features on Facebook and Instagram that encourage young people to get addicted to the social media sites, endangering youngsters and exacerbating the juvenile mental health epidemic.

Former Meta engineering director Arturo Béjar testified in November before a Senate subcommittee on social media and the teen mental health crisis, attempting to clarify how Zuckerberg and other Meta executives were aware of the negative effects Instagram was causing but decided against taking significant action to address them.

The testimony was given in the midst of a bipartisan congressional effort to enact laws safeguarding minors online. The Federal Trade Commission put out broad revisions to a decades-old statute in December that governs how internet businesses may monitor and market to minors. Some of the proposed changes include restricting push notifications and automatically disabling targeted advertisements for children under the age of 13.

THINGS TO BE AWAITING IN ’24
Chatbots are only the start of your AI companions; more are on the horizon. This autumn, while standing in a courtyard at his company’s Menlo Park, California, headquarters, Zuckerberg declared that Meta is “focused on building the future of human connection” and drew a picture of a near-future in which people engage with AI bots designed to help them as well as holographic representations of their friends and coworkers. Social media users may now connect with an army of AI bots that the firm showcased, including the likes of Paris Hilton and Snoop Dogg giving their faces to play them.

AI would be “integrated into virtually every corner of the platforms” by the following year, according to Enberg.

AI will be used by social applications to promote use, ad performance and income, subscription sign-ups, and online sales. AI will increase the dependence and intimacy between users and advertising on social media, but there will be challenges in implementing it due to increased consumer and regulatory scrutiny, the speaker said.

Additionally, the analyst believes that subscriptions are becoming a more alluring source of income for certain sites. Subscriptions “started as a way to diversify or boost revenues as social ad businesses took a hit, but they have persisted and expanded even as the social ad market has steadied itself,” according to Musk, who was inspired by his X.

Social media and artificial intelligence’s role in spreading disinformation will remain prominent for observers of social media, particularly with important elections in the United States and India, among other nations.

A.J. Nash, vice president of intelligence at cybersecurity company ZeroFox, told the AP in May that “we’re not prepared for this.” The development of audio and video capability seems to me to be a major advancement. It will make a big difference if you can do it on a big scale and share it on social media.