Elon Musk has acknowledged that his $44 billion takeover of X “may fail” – a stark admission that came as he faced fresh public outrage over a decision to eliminate the social media site’s “block” feature.
Musk commented on X’s uncertain future came even as Threads, the rival text-based social media platform launched by Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta last month, prepared to roll out a web version in its latest effort to lure users.
“The sad truth is that there are no great ‘social networks’ right now,” Musk said. “We may fail, as so many have predicted, but we will try our best to make there be at least one.”
The X owner, who is worth an estimated $225.5 billion, infuriated users last Friday by revealing they would no longer be allowed to block accounts, except in the case of direct messages.
Musk argued that the block feature “makes no sense” and said users would have to make do with simply “muting” accounts from appearing on their timeline.
The move triggered immediate pushback, with Monica Lewinsky among those who urged Musk and X CEO Linda Yaccarino to reconsider nixing the feature.
“Please rethink removing the block feature. as an anti-bullying activist (and target of harassment) i can assure you it’s a critical tool to keep people safe online,” Lewinsky said.
Despite his apparent doubts about X’s future success, Musk poked fun at users who had raised a stink about his decision to get rid of the block function.
“Pretty fun blocking people who complain that blocking is going away. How does the medicine taste?” Musk wrote on Sunday.
The criticism was one of the multiple headaches that emerged for X over the weekend.
On Saturday, a glitch on X’s platform caused pictures and videos that were uploaded to Twitter prior to 2015 to disappear from the site.
One of the pictures to be temporarily erased was comedian’s Ellen DeGeneres famous selfie from the 2014 Oscars alongside Jennifer Lawrence, Bradley Cooper and Meryl Steep. That image was later restored, though the glitch appeared to persist for other media.
“More vandalism from @elonmusk,” said user Tom Coates, who was among the first to flag the issue. “Twitter has now removed all media posted before 2014. Thats – so far – almost a decade of pictures and videos from the early 2000s removed from the service.”
Separately, a report from Mashable revealed that 42% of Musk’s roughly 153 million followers had zero followers of their own. More than 100 million accounts that follow Musk have tweeted less than 10 times.
The data suggests that many of Musk’s followers have inactive accounts – and raised the possibility that some could be “bots.” The billionaire famously vowed to eliminate all bots from Twitter as part of his plans to rejuvenate the site.
Meanwhile, Zuckerberg’s plan to roll out a web version of Threads added additional pressure on X. While Threads has lost more than half of its user base since its debut, it is still considered the most significant challenge to date for Musk’s platform.
Instagram chief Adam Mosseri confirmed on Friday that Threads’ web version was close to a debut.
“It’s a little bit buggy right now, you don’t want it just yet,” Mosseri said. “As soon as it is ready we will share it with everybody else.”
If X were to fail at some point in the future, it would mark one of the costliest business disasters in history. Musk was forced to sell off a significant chunk of Tesla stock to fund the $44 billion deal.
Earlier this month, Yaccarino claimed that X is close to breaking even from a revenue perspective following Musk’s extensive cost-cutting measures, including mass layoffs.