Twitter was never the largest social network, but it remained one of the most influential as a home to celebrities, journalists, and influencers of all sorts and the go-to network for breaking news. Since Elon Musk purchased it, Twitter’s employee count has dropped by more than half, advertisers have tightened budgets, and it’s charging money for access to verified checkmarks and Tweetdeck. Oh, and now it’s called X instead of Twitter.
Nikita Bier, a co-founder of tbh (acquired by Meta, then Facebook, in 2017) and Gas (acquired by Discord in 2023), will lead product at the social network.
Bier once made a pitch for the role directly to Musk on X in 2022, shortly after Musk revealed his intentions to buy the company (then Twitter).
The Elon Musk-run platform alleges the Stop Hiding Hate Act “impermissibly interferes with the First Amendment-protected editorial judgments” of companies like X to decide how to moderate content. Platforms could face fines unless they disclose what X calls “highly sensitive and controversial speech,” which it says the state may not like. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals already blocked parts of a similar California law on First Amendment grounds, following a separate X challenge.
Were you feeling left out by the terrible economics of Musk’s Twitter buyout? Great news! xAI, which now owns Twit — I mean, X — is selling shares. Also, Neuralink, newly freed from those pesky FDA staffers overseeing its applications, raised more money. has raised $650 million. Plus, there will be a public demo in two weeks! You know, if I were a cynical person, I might think Musk was trying to publicly distance himself from his time at DOGE.
After announcing a “pause” on encrypted DMs earlier this week, Musk said the company formerly known as Twitter has started to test a new messaging system with support for file transfers and calling. TechCrunch recently reported the feature had begun to appear for some paying users, but there’s no word yet on when it may be more widely available.
All new XChat is rolling out with encryption, vanishing messages and the ability to send any kind of file. Also, audio/video calling. This is built on Rust with (Bitcoin style) encryption, whole new architecture.
When Musk bought Twitter, the banks that backed him were left with almost $13 billion of debt that was quickly branded toxic. Three years on, they’ve mostly made their money back, boosted by Trump’s election and a little help from Elon himself. As one banker put it: “It was a bet on the world’s richest man, and it paid off.”
The company is pausing the feature “while we work on making some improvements,” according to a post. X, then Twitter, launched encrypted DMs in May 2023, but they had some limitations.
In a report published as part of X’s compliance with EU laws, the platform revealed that monthly active users in Europe decreased from around 105 million in October 2024 to 95 million as of April 2025. France lost the most users (2.7 million), followed by Poland (1.8 million) and Germany (1.3 million), as pointed out by Politico.
[politico.eu]
After the acquisition, Systrom says he informed his board that Twitter had decided to restrict access to part of its API, which allowed people to find their Twitter friends on Instagram. A Twitter executive “made it clear that this is in direct retaliation to Facebook cutting off the same API access to Twitter. I can only imagine Jack + Dick are also not very happy about the acquisition.”
Their feud also blocked Instagram link previews in tweets until it was resolved over backyard pizza in 2021.
The new chatbot feature is similar to memory capabilities that have long been available on ChatGPT and Gemini, allowing users to set aside some older conversations that can be referenced in future inquiries.
xAI says Grok’s memory feature is available on the Grok website and iOS/Android app in beta (excluding EU/UK), and will be added to X’s built-in version of Grok “soon.”
The UK is prepared to cut a tax that targets Silicon Valley, and other countries may follow suit.
According to a legal filing X is willing to drop Twitch from its antitrust lawsuit accusing advertisers of an “illegal boycott,” but only if Twitch meets “certain conditions” by the end of the year — though it hasn’t said what those are. Amazon-owned Twitch wasn’t one of the initial companies X sued, but was added at a later date. It’s not the first to get out either — Unilever was dropped from the suit in October 2024.
Somewhere in the loop of Reuters / CNBC newswires connected to stock traders’ terminals and the @deitaone account on X that usually reposts wire reports, a comment from Trump economic adviser Kevin Hassett was reported as though the White House would consider a 90-day pause on tariffs for countries other than China.
The only problem is that while his response to being asked about a pause in a Fox News interview started with the word “yeah,” it was not a yes to the question being asked. The White House claimed the whole thing was fake news, and prices quickly dropped again.
The European Union could announce a fine against X this summer that exceeds $1 billion for violating the Digital Services Act, The New York Times reports.
[nytimes.com]
As Wall Street Journal reporter Meghan Bobrowsky highlights, the valuations used for Elon Musk’s all-stock combo platter of X companies were negotiated in an... interesting way.
The WSJ article also mentions “Executives at the companies, which share personnel, believe it will be easier to raise money for the combined businesses under xAI than it would be separately,” and that all shares of X and xAI will be exchanged for shares in a new company: xAI Holdings Corp.
X’s AI chatbot is now baked into the encrypted messaging app, though you’ll have to be a Telegram Premium subscriber to take advantage and chat to it.
The team-up shouldn’t come as a huge surprise. X owner Elon Musk backed Telegram CEO Pavel Durov after his arrest in France last year, and both CEOs have positioned themselves as defenders of free speech.
It’s not immediately clear whether the platform or someone with control (like his defense team) removed the account. Mangione, who is accused of gunning down UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in December, has amassed something of a following since his arrest. At a routine court hearing in February, hundreds of people tried to get a seat in the courtroom.
Investors have reportedly valued the social media giant at the same amount Elon Musk purchased it for in 2022, a sharp jump after it was deemed worth less than $10 billion in September 2024.
Musk’s plum position in the White House might have something to do with X’s perceived change of fortunes, though that hasn’t helped Tesla, which is in the midst of a 50 percent stock slump since December. Bloomberg added to the report later, saying X raised “almost $1 billion in new equity funding” with participation from Musk.
Aakash Sastry, the founder of Hotshot, said in a post on X that the AI startup is “excited to continue scaling” its efforts at the Elon Musk-owned xAI. This could be a sign that xAI is getting closer to adding video generation to its AI chatbot Grok, something Musk previously hinted at in January, as spotted by TechCrunch.
If you’d like to remember the days before X, Engadget points out that an auction for one of two large signs from the company’s pre-acquisition San Francisco headquarters is close to ending. RR Auction says this sign, which was mounted on the side of the building facing Jessie Street, was obtained from the 2023 rebranding auction, and bidding is currently up to $21,664 after 11 bids.
While Elon Musk claimed the “massive cyberattack” impacting X’s service had originated from Ukrainian IP addresses, security researchers note that this isn’t conclusive as attackers often obfuscate their true locations via compromised devices, proxy networks, and VPNs.
Analysts told Wired that there’s also evidence that some of X’s servers were publicly visible before being secured behind the company’s Cloudflare DDoS protection, which may have exposed the platform to direct attacks.
For those of you who don’t know Latin: Zuck’s tee is “aut Zuck aut nihil,” a play on “aut Caesar aut nihil,” which means “Zuck or nothing.” Graber’s tee is “mundus sine caesaribus,” or “a world without Caesars.” We love a woman who can shitpost IRL.
The platform has been going down intermittently since around 5:40AM ET on Monday, with no official ETA for when the outages will be resolved, and no details provided about what’s causing the issues. Musk made similar claims about cyberattacks impacting X’s services last year when Spaces crashed out during a scheduled conversation with Donald Trump, though X staffers at the time told The Verge that an attack hadn’t occurred.
