By Staff
As the media landscape evolves, a significant shift is occurring in how Americans consume news. With declining trust in traditional legacy news organizations such as NBC, CBS, and ABC, many are turning to alternative platforms for their information, with X (formerly Twitter) emerging as a prominent player in this new narrative.
Recent studies highlight a concerning trend in public trust toward legacy media. According to a Gallup poll conducted in 2023, only 16% of Americans expressed a great deal of trust in television news, a stark decline from 24% in 2020.
Similarly, trust in print media has also declined, with just 18% of respondents indicating they trust newspapers “a lot.”
This diminishing trust raises questions about the relevance of traditional news outlets in an era where sensationalism and bias frequently dominate headlines. The skepticism surrounding legacy media has coincided with the rise of X, particularly since Elon Musk’s acquisition of the platform in late 2022. Musk envisioned X as a central hub for news and information, enabling users to engage directly with content and creators while also challenging the status quo.
He stated, “In a world where information is abundant, the user becomes the most important source of news. X empowers its users to be the news.”
He further added, “Everyone has the potential to report on what they see and experience. We are enabling a new generation of storytellers who are not bound by traditional media constraints. With the power to share comes the responsibility to verify. Users are not just consumers; they must also be vigilant curators of the information they share.”
This democratization of information allows individuals to curate their news feeds, fostering an environment where diverse viewpoints can coexist. For many, the immediacy and accessibility of information are appealing, especially when contrasted with the often slow-paced and biased reporting of legacy media. The approach seems to have resonated; recent analytics indicate a surge in user engagement on X. According to ‘@XData,’ the official account dedicated to sharing data about user activity on the platform, 2024 was a record-breaking year, marked by increased user engagement.
A year-end report listed the total user activity on X at an average of 364 billion seconds per day, reflecting a 10% year-over-year increase from 2023. In response to inquiries about this metric, Musk explained that measuring user activity in seconds is the most accurate way to track engagement on the platform.
“Cumulative user-seconds per day of phone screen time, as reported by iOS and Android, is the hardest to game,” Musk stated.
Prior to Musk’s takeover, rumors circulated about the actual number of active accounts Twitter claimed to have, partly due to millions of suspected bots and fake accounts, highlighting the need for a more reliable tracking method, implemented in 2023.
In an article titled “Elon Was Right About Bots,” published on the cybersecurity site “internet2.0”, the authors concluded, “After analyzing 1.269 million accounts on X.com (formerly known as Twitter), 5th Column AI predicts that approximately 64% of the accounts currently analyzed are potentially bots.”
When using the standard DAU/MAU tracking metric, bots are counted as long as they’re logged in. However, when tracking in seconds, bot activity is far less likely to skew tracking results, meaning that bot accounts identified in 2024, had minimal impact on the year-end data results reported by XData.
Despite attempts by Musk’s critics to undermine X’s credibility as a viable news source, the platform experienced a surge in sign-ups, participation, and advertising in the latter half of 2024.
According to a CNBC report, major advertisers like IBM, Disney, Comcast, Discovery, Warner Bros., and Lionsgate all returned to X after a year-long boycott over concerns about “brand safety.”
Musk highlighted X’s success in a post on November 8, 2024, declaring, “All-time high usage of this platform!”
Rival NBC downplayed Musk’s positive outlook a few days later. “X sees largest user exodus since Elon Musk’s takeover,” the headline read.
“NBC News spoke to six people who have joined or committed to using Threads and Bluesky instead of X after the election because of Musk,” it reported. “Each of them cited growing concerns on X, including bots, partisan advertisements, and harassment, which they felt reached a tipping point when Donald Trump was elected president last week with Musk’s support.”
The British daily newspaper The Guardian echoed similar sentiments from X users across the pond. Bruce Daisley, introduced as a “former vice president of the company (Twitter) in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa,” shared his thoughts on the much-hyped exodus.
“There’s a lot of content being amplified that most reasonable people would question whether it is worth amplifying,” he told The Guardian, referring to Elon Musk’s comments on the prison sentence given to controversial political figure Tommy Robinson, whom The Guardian described as a “jailed far-right activist.”
“Tommy Robinson is not some benign debater,” Daisley asserted. “He’s someone who wants to weaponize racist narratives and racist rhetoric.”
Robinson’s “racist” label can be traced back to 2009 when he founded the English Defence League (EDL), which he described as being “against the rise of radical Islam.” More recently, in 2022, he produced the film “The Rape of Britain: Survivor Stories,” which highlights the sexual abuse of young British girls, some as young as five, who were reportedly raped by Pakistani Muslim “grooming gangs.”
Despite the horrors inflicted primarily on young white girls by Pakistani men, politicians and legacy media in the UK, who have downplayed the scope of the crimes for decades, shifted the debate to the hatred the Muslim community was experiencing over the resurgence of the scandal.
In an article in The Guardian titled “Tommy Robinson and the Far Right’s New Playbook,” author Daniel Trilling suggested that Robinson was “bringing extremist myths into the mainstream” when he spoke of “grooming gangs” in 2018.
“White men commit the vast majority of child abuse in the UK,” Trilling noted, while pointing out that Robinson was arrested multiple times for his “anti-Muslim and anti-immigration rhetoric,” including “making statements outside sexual assault trials involving Muslim defendants.”
Labeling anyone who drew attention to the “grooming” scandal a racist is an effective deterrent used by officials now accused of a coverup, to silence and intimidate anyone from coming forward, as British poker pro and host of “Win-Win” podcast, Liv Boeree, explains:
“Fear of being called racist destroys all reason.”
Boeree was responding to outrage on X after reports surfaced revealing that parents who attempted to rescue their children from houses where they were being abused by multiple men were arrested themselves, as were the girls—some as young as 11—for “breach of peace” or “being drunk and disorderly.”
“A lot of Brits have been warning about this abomination for years and have been repeatedly shunned and dismissed by the establishment as ‘far-right racists’ for trying to raise awareness of the rot within this particular subculture.”
When Elon Musk shared the story with his 210 million followers on X, it gained worldwide attention, leading to backlash against politicians, police, and social workers who are now accused of “coddling” rapists to secure a voting block, and avoid criticism of Britain’s uncontrolled immigration policy.
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who served as head of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) from 2008 to 2013, responded to allegations that he failed to protect children by stating, “I tackled that head-on.” These remarks come despite only a fraction of the alleged “grooming gang” rapes resulting in convictions, with no deportations occurring.
While it is disheartening that the reputation of the law-abiding Muslim community has been tarnished, the blame primarily rests with the authorities who protected members of the community from prosecution, not with those demanding answers.
Dr. Jordan Peterson, a Canadian psychologist, best-selling author, and media commentator, also points out that the Muslim community itself bears some responsibility for the situation.
In a video interview with UK media personality Piers Morgan, he explained, “One in seven Muslim men in the community were ‘directly involved.’ That meant everyone knew about it. Where are these moderate (Muslim) voices?” he asked.
According to Boeree, part of the problem has to do with intimidation and cultural norms within the community itself. “There’s an element of fear and trained behavior at issue as well. Women in the rapists’ families are themselves downtrodden and trained never to speak out against their male relatives.”
Peterson went further, bringing up an uncomfortable topic Boeree described as “the elephant in the room,” that is, the compatibility or incompatibility between Islam and Christianity—a topic that legacy media time and time again dismiss as “Islamophobia.”
“There’s another ugly issue that no one will grapple with,” he said. “We don’t really understand the relationship between the religious doctrine and these crimes.
There are certainly doctrines in Islam that are very difficult to reconcile with free, liberal Western Christian democracies. We need an international symposium on the relationship between the Christian West and the Islamic world.”
At times during the conversation, Morgan seemed more interested in attacking Robinson’s flawed character than in addressing the root of the problem. In response, Dr. Peterson pointed out that many men of impeccable character remained silent while thousands upon thousands of young girls were raped.
In his recent statements, Morgan attempted to defend the media institution he represents by highlighting their decade-long coverage of the scandal. Ironically, he overlooked the fact that their selective reporting played a significant role in keeping the truth under wraps for so long. While they claim to have been shining a light on the issue, the reality is that most people remained oblivious to the events that unfolded.
Now, thanks to X, these important topics are finally being brought to the forefront, exposing Britain’s shame.
X is the new news…
