Musk has put a hex on X, but his $44bn bought a lot of power

Three years ago, when Elon Musk completed his $44bn acquisition of the social network then known as Twitter, he wrote an open letter to the service's advertisers.

- James Ball

He was not buying Twitter “to make more money”, he said. Instead, he was doing it “to try to help humanity”. Still, Musk set lofty technical and commercial goals: X, as he renamed it, would double its revenues within three years and triple its users. He promised to “solve” the site’s problem with bots, introduce new features, and pledged that content moderation policy would be overseen by a “council with widely diverse viewpoints”.

Musk even promised to build X into an “everything app”, handling social media and video, but also payments, shopping and even banking.

Three years on, how is he doing?

The platform

Many of Musk’s initial promises have come nowhere close to being met. There is no content moderation council, no one uses X as their banking app and the service has been accused by multiple governments of stoking far-right hate, including rioting in the UK.