X is still losing users in Europe, while it’s also, apparently, losing moderators as well, according to its latest EU transparency report.
Under the EU Digital Services Act (DSA), all large platforms need to provide quarterly updates on their performance in several key areas, including moderation, usage, etc.
And this week, X has published its update for October, and there are some interesting notes on its performance.
First off, as noted, X’s EU usage has continued to decline, though it has slowed since X’s last report.
According to X’s latest filing, it had 105, 271,027 monthly active users (both logged in members and guests) on average between April and September this year. That’s a decline of 723,811 users from its previous report, which covered February to July.
Which, as you can see in this chart, is less of a drop off than it saw in that period.
X also saw a slight decline in logged in users in the latest period (-326k), which is the primary figure that social platforms use to measure active users.
So overall, X is losing traction in Europe. Which, given the various changes at the app under Elon Musk, and his own divisive stances, probably makes sense, but at the same time, X is not seeing some massive drop off, as many might have expected.
I mean, sure, over a longer time period, X has lost a significant chunk of its EU users. X has lost 6% of its EU audience since August 2023, and it’s still declining, which is a sizable amount of people (7m total users).
That means less opportunity for ad exposure, less engagement, less business opportunity overall, so this is a big blow for the app. But with Threads also on the rise, I’m guessing many would have thought that a lot more X users would have made the switch, based on numbers alone.
Then again this isn’t a measure of time spent, and I suspect that people are also spending less time on X than they used to. That’s another factor, in that it could be that many users are still logging in, but they’re not sticking around in the app as long as they used to, which would explain why both Threads and X have a lot of EU users.
But either way, it’s not a great sign for Elon’s X project, and it’s alignment with what people want from a social app.
The other key point of note from X’s latest report is its count of moderators in EU.
In its overview, X shares that it currently has 1275 people working in content moderation, “who are not specifically designated to only work on EU matters.” That suggests that this is X’s overall, global moderation headcount, which is down from the 2,294 moderation staff that it had back in November 2023.
So X has almost halved its moderation crew over the past year, despite increasing reports of hate speech and misinformation in the app.
Of course, X would prefer to rely on Community Notes as its primary means of content moderation, taking any such calls out of the hands of X management. But research continues to show that Community Notes is not up to this task, particularly because of its requirements for cross-political consensus for approved notes.
Some issues, particularly related to election misinformation, will never reach agreement, and as such, many proposed notes are simply never shown. So while X has continued to improve the speed of Notes display, and the systems behind the process, the inherent bias of contributors seems to be polluting its potential in this respect.
Also worth noting, for several languages, X has only a single moderator able to cover those needs. According to its data, X has one moderation staff member each available for posts in Bulgarian, Croatian, Greek, Irish, Latvian, and Polish.
That seems not great.
The report also outlines the amount of content removals that X has actioned over the past six months, including government requests. Most of these seem pretty in line with other platforms, while there’s no indication of X taking more of a stand on free speech grounds.
So, X has fewer users, and fewer moderation staff, as it continues to be re-shaped into something new under Elon Musk.
Is that something better than Twitter was? I guess that’s in the eye of the beholder.
You can check out X’s latest EU disclosure report here. Thanks to Xavier Degraux for the heads up on the latest reports.
