Talk:Twitter

Alternative idea: article split

Because Musk's X is so very different in most salient respects from the original Twitter, other than sharing some user-interface elements and a general purpose of short-form social media, I think it would make more sense to fork these articles into separate Twitter (defunct) and X (social network) (ongoing) articles. We take this approach with other sorts of business units that change hands – when the nature of that unit radically changes, which is the case here. When its nature doesn't substantively change, we usually retain a single article, even if the unit's name changed, and just annotate the change in control and ownership as part of the article text and usually also summarized in the lead. E.g., this is the case with most book-publishing imprints that have changed corporate ownership (sometimes multiple times), though in a few cases they have forked into multiple confusingly similarly-named entities, sometimes with completely different ownership, and this has also happened with some tech brands; those cases also result in separate articles.

The point is, we scope (and name) our articles to match reality, not to defy it.

This rather obvious solution would also, obviously and necessarily, just end the ongoing dispute about this article's title.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:58, 15 February 2025 (UTC)

I have suggested this before but I believe this idea has been put on hold with ongoing moratorium on move requests. I was planning to reopen that a few weeks after the moratorium was over. Masem (t) 04:05, 15 February 2025 (UTC)

I would support this. ZLima12 (talk) 05:54, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

I would strongly oppose this. S Marshall's close of the above RFC does show that 4 consensuses exist depending on which aspects determine what makes a site different or not, but the two aspects that people argue make it a different site (the community and company are different) are, at least in my opinion, weaker than the two arguments that they are the same (the same software and considered the same by sources). As an example to compare, Disney is a 100 year old company that is certainly owned by different people and has a different community demographic, but is still the same company because they still produce movies, theme parks, etc. like they used to. Twitter/X having a new CEO and a different group of people using the site should not supersede the facts that most - if not all - of the site's functions are identical, and that secondary sources still consider them the same (sources nowadays still interchangeably use "X" or "Twitter"). For example, from the outage the site had yesterday, here is a list of sources using both of the site's names in the same title: Unnamed anon (talk) 01:39, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

I strongly oppose this EarthDude (talk) 04:37, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

Oppose per the RfC above. Twitter is not "defunct", it's just called X now. Some1 (talk) 02:12, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

References

Content of Tweets graph

File:Content of Tweets.svg

The graph, the listed stats (accompanying the graph) or Key all do not equal 100% in the #Content section

• The graph: 3.6+3.8+5.9+40.1+37.6+8.7 = 99.7%
• The accompanying stats of the graph : 3.6+3.8+6+40+38+8.7= 100.1%
• The key: 3.99+3.75+5.86+40.54+37.55+8.70 = 100.39%

How are all three of these individually incorrect???

The actual stats are: 3.60 + 3.75 + 5.85 + 40.55 + 37.55 + 8.70 = 100%

I think the graph and relevant information about this need to be fixed, or removed. Noaaah (talk) 02:35, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

User:Bryan.burgers made the pie chart with percentages based on an pie chart made by two others at Commons. It looks like it was rounded to one decimal, but with a slight error. The key on the article also looks to be in a similar situation, but with more rounding. The key at the image looks to have been copied the closest, but with a odd error in the first number and two other numbers being adjusted by a hundredth for an unclear reason. The keys are easy to fix, but the image will need to be modified to fix that. --Super Goku V (talk) 13:28, 25 February 2025 (UTC)

Twitter is X

Since twitter is now x should we change the name? Yrawfdatrærb (talk) 04:45, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

Please see the FAQ. A. Randomdude0000 (talk) 04:52, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

You are right, it should be changed, I don't know why it wasn't done, it adopted the name for over 1 year now. StormHunterBryante5467 (talk) 23:59, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

We're about to do another move request in a few days. Turtletennisfogwheat (talk) 03:41, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

Here we go again. 🙄 GSK (talk • edits) 03:45, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

Lol we’re deadnaming X As Twitter 36.230.49.118 (talk) 11:39, 28 March 2025 (UTC)

>"""""""""deadnaming"""""""""" X 1101 (talk) 07:32, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

I am new to the hullabaloo, but came here wondering the same thing. —  AjaxSmack  04:20, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

came here and thought the exact same thing. It's called X. why is the article called Twitter? Is it going to be that way in 20 years when Twitter will be as archaic a word as Ask Jeeves? I can't help but suspect that it's a political influenced stance to not change the name. Binglederry (talk) 21:44, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

Wikipedia doesn't use official names, it uses common names, as per article naming policy. 1101 (talk) 11:45, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

I'd say at this point in time, X is now the common name. At least, within my information space, I've heard more people start to say X than I've heard people say Twitter. Binglederry (talk) 17:26, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

Move it to X asap, especially now after merging with xAI.♦ Dr. Blofeld 09:50, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

The letter X already a page. 1101 (talk) 22:45, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

We are talking about the social platform. It is supposed to be X (social platform), not just the letter X. Formerly Twitter. StormHunterBryante5467 22:50, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

Well, apparently there's a six-month moratorium on requests to move the page according to the FAQ and if I move it without a request it'll almost certainly be reverted so I guess we'll have to wait before deciding on a new name. 1101 (talk) 00:51, 30 March 2025 (UTC)

The moratorium ends tomorrow, or today in the UTC time zone, March 30. StormHunterBryante5467 00:52, 30 March 2025 (UTC)

Don't you think it should be X (social network)? At least that seems more common than social platform.

See also: Threads (social network), Mastodon (social network), and Gab (social network)

1101 (talk) 04:35, 30 March 2025 (UTC)

Twitter is by far the most used platform in it's class?

https://seo.ai/blog/how-many-users-on-x

As of early 2025, X (formerly Twitter) is estimated to have 650 million monthly active users. Daily active users range between 240–300 million. It is projected that if X maintains its current pace of feature development and global expansion, it could surpass 700 million monthly average users by late 2025.

---

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluesky

Users

32.4 million total registered users (as of 28 February 2025)

1–10 million daily active users worldwide (2024)

---

I don't know what are the most reliable sources for current and Forecasted amount of users. These are the sources I first found after first looking does Wikipedia say anything (it says only for BlueSky, not for Twitter/X), then opening the first result Google search gave me about Twitter OR X users.

Over 2.8 billion accounts have been created (https://breachforums.st/Thread-2022-Twitter-account-data-for-2-873-410-842-accounts-103-GB). That data could be used to determine active monthly users. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.237.119.249 (talk) 11:42, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

91.159.189.148 (talk) 08:35, 1 March 2025 (UTC)

seo.ai is a website that bills itself as a source for AI generated articles. it is not a reliable source. afaik, twitter doesnt release user numbers anymore. Carlp941 (talk) 18:43, 1 March 2025 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 19 March 2025

165.73.38.118 (talk) 08:59, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

please remove the above information from twiter about me

 Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. Annh07 (talk) 12:28, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

For FAQ, can we add a source for Twitter/X "remaining widely recognizable to the general public due to its history and cultural impact."?

Not saying that this is invalid, but I believe to stay neutral and relevant, perhaps we should either add a source for this or rephrase it to say instead "have been considered in consensus to be widely recognizable to the general public due to its history and cultural impact". We could even link to articles related to other countries or past discussions where this point was made, or if there are several, we can link to the one with the most prominent information. We perhaps should have a link to the discussion where the statement was made thatthere is "no consensus that Twitter and X are such radically and fundamentally different products that they should be covered entirely separately".

Discussion is encouraged and appreciated! Theadventurer64 (talk) 07:11, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

Move request

Twitter to X (social network). The moratorium has expired today, and X is more widely used now. StormHunterBryante5467 13:03, 30 March 2025 (UTC)

• Oppose move. Support split. I am still personally against the idea of moving the article to X (social network), but I would support a split between Twitter as it was up until Musk purchased it and a new X (social network) article covering X as it is now. GSK (talk • edits) 14:12, 30 March 2025 (UTC)
• Oppose a simple move. Would support a WP:CONTENTSPLIT of the article, which is currently being discussed in a section below. PK-WIKI (talk) 21:55, 30 March 2025 (UTC)
• Ambivalent on move, oppose a split, per the RFC ending February 2025 that concluded: Wikipedians feel that the sources don't clearly distinguish between X and Twitter, so from that point of view it's essentially the same service. Loytra (talk) 00:14, 31 March 2025 (UTC)

  Disagree that that line was the "conclusion" of the RFC. It's one of several bullet points, half of which went the other way. PK-WIKI (talk) 17:41, 31 March 2025 (UTC)

  Fair point. Regardless, I disagree that Twitter is in any way 'defunct', and as such oppose a split. Loytra (talk) 12:30, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

  I have suggested a different approach to a split described in the section below that honors the concerns that the service as Twitter and X are essentially the same, but splits off content beyond the service itself (like moderation and controversies) into sepearate articles for both the Twitter and X counterparts. Masem (t) 19:05, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

• Strong Oppose Split as different products; Neutral (leaning support) on Move and Masem's proposal of new pages surrounding controversy/management. Due to the complexity, I'm going to split my argument into three bullet points for easier reading.
• Strong Oppose Split: Per my comment about a month ago, many sources interchangeably use both names "Twitter" and "X" in the same title; my comment listed about 16 very recent sources that are mostly from different publishers. We should put more weight onto how both primary and secondary sources do not distinguish between Twitter and X and how the software is near-identical, rather than arbitrary statements that editors here believe that the company and community are different. These were the four closing statements from the RFC Loytra linked, and the half that claim they are the same site hold significantly more weight than the half claiming they're separate in my opinion.
• Neutral on Move: Because sources interchangeably use both names, I'm neutral on which name this page uses as long as it's made clear that they're not separate sites. I listed "leaning support" because I think renaming this page "X.com (social network)" would significantly slow down the repeated questions about the name, since I believe way less people would question why a page is under its current name than those who question why it's under its old name. I would also suggest "X.com" rather than just "X", partially for consistency with the earlier X.com (bank), and due to it reading better for any spinoff pages surrounding controversies and whatnot.
• Masem's proposal: I think Masem's proposal of splitting into pages regarding controversy and moderation is a good idea to reduce page bloat, but again, one of either "X.com (social network)" or "Twitter" should be a redirect of the other, not their own pages. For Masem's proposal, I think the names Controversies surrounding X.com and Moderation of X.com are good names for the new pages (replace the "X.com" in the proposed titles with "Twitter" if the move fails). Unnamed anon (talk) 05:07, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

• Strong Oppose move. The vast majority of times I see "X" being used, it's always followed with some version of 'aka twitter' because X is not well-known as the name of the platform. Twitter is well-known and still colloquially used, hence why news articles still consistently have to clarify that twitter is trying to change its brand to "X" now. If that were truly widely used by everyone, the constant clarifying would not be necessary.

In case anyone needs it, here are some example articles still doing the clarifying that "X" is twitter in the last 5 days. BBC, Yahoo Finance, Tech Crunch and many more. Some places still refer to it as "X/Twitter" or "Twitter/X," (example in the last month at The Indianapolis Star) again, because "X," I don't believe, is truly the commonly used name recognizable on its own to most people.

Within the last few months, Shopify said "Twitter (Now X)" in a headline. And people and companies are still consistently using the word "tweet" (aka a thing done on twitter).

Mild oppose (but mainly ambivalent) on splitting. I do think it's pretty much one and the same company, so it feels unnecessary to split, but the vibes have certainly changed (yes, yes, I know we don't go on 'vibes' but nonetheless), and there is plenty to say about the history of it - both before the apparent name change (that seemingly has not stuck in many places) and after. So, I could see a universe in which you split them. If I had to choose one, I'd choose split over move, for sure. But I think neither are needed. Article is clear as is. And a "Twitter under Elon Musk" page already exists which explains plenty. So, again, both split and move seem unnecessary to me. Wikipedian339 (talk) 05:59, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

• I'd say we split into two separate pages.

• The "Twitter" page is about the original Twitter from it's creation in 2006 to Elon Musk's acquisition and takeover in 2022 and rebrand in 2023.
• "X (social network)" is about Twitter after the rebrand... or Twitter since the Musk takeover. There's a page called Twitter under Elon Musk which further covers the whole thing regarding Twitter under Musk.

Let's just say that X is the successor to Twitter by rebranding.

Remember the social platform that become a predecessor to TikTok? SuperMario231 64 (talk) 06:07, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

Oppose — I guess the issue is that, in actual conversation, it's almost overwhelmingly referred to as Twitter. Even in internal code, I see stuff like twitter:card in webpages, even recent ones[1] (press F12 and check the header) associated with Musk himself. People still call the posts tweets. Not only was Twitter overwhelmingly the name until the very recent renaming[2] but it seems to continue to be the name in common parlance today.[3] The rename is relatively recent in the grander scheme of Twitter history, and doesn't seem to have been taken up definitively by the public — at least not quite yet (the brand recognition for Twitter is quite strong). 1101 (talk) 12:45, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

Twitter poster vs X poster vs Tweeter X social media vs Twitter social media 1101 (talk) 12:50, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

Prior to the moratorium I had proposed this split but I would estimate it was around 60% against it based on the fact that the tech behind Twitter and X doesn't don't really change. That's why the new split approach I describe below, to keep this page as much about the features of Twitter/X, and moving history and criticisms to separate sets of pages, would likely be more amenable. Masem (t) 13:26, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

• Comment. I have no opinion on this request at this time but I will note that an official move request should be done through WP:RM and not through a somewhat hidden talk page discussion. Esolo5002 (talk) 06:08, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

Split "Twitter" and "X (social network)"

Moratorium had expired anyway.

What about we split "Twitter" and "X (social network)"?

• The "Twitter" page covers the original Twitter from it's creation until Elon's takeover in 2022 (and rebrand in 2023). Twitter as in Twitter in the past, which is a defunct platform. Same goes to Musical.ly which become TikTok.
• "X (social network)" covers the current Twitter. (There's a page called Twitter under Elon Musk which covers further the current Twitter under Musk.)

This is to prevent any further confusion from especially who still calls Twitter "Twitter" (myself included) and others the letter X. SuperMario231 64 (talk) 17:02, 30 March 2025 (UTC)

Another option is to keep one page about the social network, with a brief summary of its history (using main or seealso links to the existing separate history pages for pre-Musk, the Musk buyout, and post-Musk history), a summary of the major features of the network, perhaps making a section on historical features since removed or changed, and then having any major discussion of controversies, moderation, etc. again briefly summarized and using main/seealso links to separate pages for pre-Musk and post-Musk aspects, otherwise keeping the one page about the actual network as free as possible over these factors. Masem (t) 18:26, 30 March 2025 (UTC)

Before this section gets filled up, I'd like to mention that the above section also includes !votes and discussions about whether or not to split, so to make it easier for whoever has to determine the consensus, please comment in the above section, rather than either this section or starting a new one. That way, the closer only has to read one section instead of seeing arguments split across multiple sections. Unnamed anon (talk) 05:34, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

Why Twitter?

Hello, I’d like to propose that we update the name of the platform in the Wikipedia article to reflect its current rebranding from Twitter to X. As of 07/23/23, Twitter officially rebranded itself as X following the acquisition by Elon Musk. This change has been widely reported by reliable sources, and the official name of the platform is now X. While I understand that many people still associate the platform with its previous name, the rebranding process has already taken place, and the company is actively promoting its new identity as X. Given that Wikipedia aims to reflect the most accurate and up-to-date information, I believe it’s time to update the article accordingly. I also understand that some may be concerned about the historical significance of the Twitter name. However, Wikipedia guidelines state that the current, widely recognized name should be used for articles unless there's a compelling reason to retain the former name. This is especially true as X is becoming more prominent in the public discourse, with major media outlets already adopting it as the default name. To address this, perhaps we could add a note in the lead section or a disambiguation page explaining that Twitter was formerly known as Twitter, which would ensure historical accuracy. But I think we should move forward with reflecting X as the current name of the platform. Vanleos (talk) 17:09, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

Also, the moratorium on move requests started in September 2024. Since it is six months long, it should have expired in March 2025. It is now April 2025, and it is still unavailable to be moved. What happened? Vanleos (talk) 17:16, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

There is already a move proposal here as well as a proposal to split the article into two. The moratorium did indeed end on March 30, 2025, and both proposals were opened that same day. As for it is still unavailable to be moved, Twitter was move-protected by an admin in 2012, so it stands to reason that someone with admin level permissions will take care of the move, should a proposal reach consensus. GSK (talk • edits) 17:26, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

Elon Musk

The biography is poorly written. It only hints that he "stepped down" as ceo, with no formal write-up. This leaves the reader confused. 99.4.68.242 (talk) 18:21, 2 April 2025 (UTC)