Want to quit X? Here's your guide to the alternatives [View all]

In the wake of the 2024 presidential election, many people are reconsidering how they follow the news. A lot of this has to do with X, which was once a lively platform to follow and comment on current events. Elon Musk bought the site formerly known as Twitter for $44 billion in October 2022 and has transformed the site into a megaphone for right-wing misinformation. With Musk formally joining the Trump administration, the site will become little more than a vehicle for government propaganda.

The number of people who use X has dropped precipitously since Musk took over, losing one-fifth of its daily active users over the last year.

The users "that have stayed on X now largely see posts that skew toward the political bent of Musk himself," the Washington Post reported last month. X also "has secretly throttled traffic to the New York Times and other sites Musk has vilified," including sites hosted by Substack like Popular Information. Meanwhile, Musk directed engineers to increase the distribution of his own tweets. The resulting change in the algorithm "artificially boosted Musk’s tweets by a factor of 1,000." A recent experiment by Fortune found that all X users are bombarded with Musk's political musings, whether or not they follow any other accounts related to politics.

It is becoming increasingly clear that X is no longer an effective place to distribute or discover reliable news and information. Here is your guide to the alternatives.

https://popular.info/p/want-to-quit-x-heres-your-guide-to