There is a clear successor to X now, Bluesky, which means anyone not happy with X knows what their best option is.
My guess is, when X and Bluesky are roughly even in terms of active users, X’s user base will start to collapse and there will be a mass exodus to Bluesky.
I think Elon might try to intervene in that, either by regulations favoring his platform, or industrial sabotage. Maybe even try to get into the fediverse game, so X accounts could interact with Bluesky or Mastodon ones.
I’m guessing the worst of the worst will hang back at Xitter because they’d otherwise be banned elsewhere, and it will be a cesspool not unlike 8chan.
Which is a nice change, usually every alternative starts up exactly because the worst of the worst got banned from the original and had to migrate to somewhere else, and then it’s an uphill battle for anyone else to make use of that platform.
*cough* Lemmy *cough*.
My guess is that the user base shifts will vary by nation and language. The rate of X enshitification and migration has hit different regions at different speeds.
The writing is on the wall for US users though. Twitter is the AOL or MySpace of this decade. It’s lame and not fun anymore, and Bsky is fun and very active.
