X Has Gone Down The Spiral
The Right finally gets its own space and messes it up.
X is a platform with free speech (not) and no reach. For the most part you can say whatever you want but you will have no way to get your words out there. That’s not free speech, that’s just another algorithmic prison.
I have a Premium+ account (I utilized the 45% off for a year deal a couple of months ago) that is supposed to get me the greatest reach. I have close to 1400 followers on X and I’m lucky if 20 - 30 ever see my posts. I’ve tried using the “Articles” feature there, posting the same content there that I post here and it’s the same… no reach. I’ll get hundreds of views here and roughly 30 there (and that’s just impressions as it scrolls by in the stream on X). So articles are treated almost as bad as links over there. In other words, suppressed. If you add a link to a post, the post is suppressed. If you add a Substack link, then it seems like every post you make that day is suppressed. Remember too, this is with a Premium+ account. It’s supposed to be top tier.
You have to be in the Musk Club to get any traction. That means, you must only post the political narrative allowed (same as Twitter, just right instead of left). Unlike Twitter, where you could at least get a following and views for non-political posts, X doesn’t seem to allow one to get any views for non-political posting. YOU must post politics and current events that follow the allowed narrative. And here’s the thing… this shit isn’t content. They call it content creation but in reality all that will push you up is content curation if you are inline with that approved narrative.
It’s fraudulent when Musk and his club sell Premium+ and Premium as ways to get reach or make money on X. They know it too. They know the algorithm is used to pick and choose who is seen and who is invisible. And they also silence people, even people with Premium(+) accounts, if they don’t like what they post. Alex from
was suspended for posting a relatively mild image. Some X poser felt attacked or something and probably reported the image. Alex was given no appeal. So he had to cancel his paid subscription and now has no way to post from that account. Free speech? What a lie. Free speech unless someone gets offended and in this day and age, someone is always getting offended.
Can’t we as a adults use social media as adults? Why the fuck does social media need to be moderated by the platform (making them a publisher under Section 230 which should allow us to sue them). Give users Block and Mute functions and call it a day. The platform should not be moderating any legal content, period and end of story. Let adults be adults. If someone is offended, they can block or mute or get the fuck off the platform. That easily offended person should not get a say in what or how others are posting.
So with no reach and no real free speech, I was resigned to just using Grok for image generation for my Substack articles. Well… on 12/9/24 X switched their image generation model and ditched the excellent Flux backend for some piece of shit backend called aurora that makes wooden and mannequin looking, washed out images, that are slow to create, often error out, and really just look like subpar shit. Grok was excellent at image generation before. Now, I can’t even use it because the images look so terrible. All this so Musk could have Grok create memes for the Musk Club to share. That’s right… the new feature is meme creation. He got rid of the image generation people loved so his followers could create memes. Also, if you create images of Musk, Trump, or a Cyber Truck… you are gold, because those images are favored.
Sheer fucking hubris and vanity ruined Grok.
And guess what? The mass outcry of posts about how bad the new Grok image generator is… Are now being suppressed. X is a shit site.
Grok is now open to everyone (with limitations) now too. What was the point of a subscription again? Why should anyone pay for this when Musk is not giving the features away for free? I thought he was a good businessman?
As it stands… X is a useless platform for me. When my sub runs out, I will NOT be resubscribing. I’ll most likely sub to Night Cafe (a reliable source to get my images using Flux and it is affordable) and then maybe subscribing to Faderhead’s patreon so I don’t have to rely on X to get my up-to-date Faderhead news and release info.
X could have been great but they fucked it up to be worse than it was as Twitter and Twitter was bad. Social media is dying and X is not the new media. Musk shouldn’t be surprised when people start jumping ship, and by that, I mean people that aren’t on the left but people sick of how bad the functionality of the site has become. Again… Sheer fucking hubris.
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X went downhill for me after Musk’s feud with Matt Tiabbi not wanting to leave Substack for X. The Twitter files were the only reason I joined X, and for a while some what informative, but now, it’s excruciating to scroll through.
I could have written this essay, and it would have been almost word for word about the experience on 𝕏. Tried many of the same avenues you did with the Article feature - to no avail. The only thing that seemed to work for eyeballs on the articles was to drop them into relevant threads that monster accounts posted. Pretty sure that's not the way it should have to work. 30-60 impressions with a 2400 Premium+ account. Nothing organic moves. Even a custom link to SS pieces is a bust. Really, I'm only still there just for the GCs and entertainment value. Have you tried Midjourney for images, or is the Night one better?