A YouGov survey has revealed the worst popularity ratings for X (formerly Twitter) in the two years since Elon Musk first declared his interest in taking over the social media platform.
A poll on 14-15 August showed that over four in 10 (42%) of those who use X daily have a negative view of it, rising to just over half (51%) of those who ever use it.
Only half (51%) of daily X users say they have a favourable view of the social media network — a figure that drops to 38% when including all who ever use the service.
X rated
The survey was carried out after several days of far-right rioting and demonstrations in the UK, with the country’s most senior politicians including prime minister Sir Keir Starmer and London mayor Sadiq Khan accusing X of spreading misinformation. Musk, who is followed by 195m accounts on X, tweeted on 7 August that there would be “civil war” in the UK.
There appears to be widespread belief that there is too much freedom to post offensive or harmful content on X. This is by far the most widely held opinion on the matter, YouGov reported, with nearly half (48%) of the public saying so, including 58% of X users and 62% of daily users.
Only 12% of the wider public thinks X gets the balance between freedom and moderation about right and just 5% think X is too “draconian” in its moderation of content. Users themselves are more likely to think the balance is about right (20%, including 24% of daily users), while only 6-7% think X is too strict.
X fails to shake old Twitter brand
Seven in 10 (70%) Britons said they still generally refer to the platform as Twitter — a figure that rises to 80% among users. A mere 4-5% of both the wider public and the user base now primarily call the network X, while another 12-14% said they use both names.
When it comes to Musk, almost four times as many Britons have a negative view of him (64%) as a positive one (17%).
The figures represent a significant decline since YouGov first started asking in 2022, when Musk was first positioning himself to purchase the platform. While about the same number of Britons had a positive view of Musk then (23%) as do now, far fewer people actively disliked him (40%).
