Zerlina Yau

X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, gets an F from students

This past July, Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk officially replaced the iconic blue bird with an ‘X.’ This is the execution of a plan Musk announced in a tweet back in October when he had acquired Twitter; in it, he mentioned that he would use Twitter as an “accelerant to creating X,” an “everything app” used for a multitude of things. 

This decision, as well as some of Elon’s other alterations, were met with mixed responses from students at Townsend Harris High School. However, many students felt that these changes stripped away some of the popular app’s original charm.

“I feel like it’s not a very smart choice because Twitter [was] already very recognizable, and now it’s just a letter in the alphabet,” said freshman Jay Porzio. “It’s not as iconic, and in a brand you need something iconic to stand out, like YouTube’s play button and Snapchat’s ghost.”  

Freshman Aki Benjamin feels the ‘X’ changed the app’s atmosphere. “It kind of makes Twitter less relatable. People used to call it the bird app…but now it just seems like it’s fully controlled by Silicon Valley elites,” said freshman Aki Benjamin.

On the other hand, senior Miguel Santos was impartial to this change as it didn’t affect much.. “I found the rebrand from Twitter to X to be abnormal, but otherwise, it’s just a name change and not much else. The ‘everything is locked behind a paywall’ shtick may annoy others, but not me, as its features are just quality-of-life things I could live without,” he said. 

Senior Angelice Jean-Remy had a stronger opinion on Musk’s various changes. “The only good thing [Musk has] done is making it easier to see the media, but besides that I hate everything else,” she said. “First, changing the bird to ‘X’ destroyed part of the app’s uniqueness. Second, he wants to take away a lot of features, like blocking, and the little pictures that show up when the app isn’t loading properly. He also wants to encourage engagement farming, where people with Twitter Blue are verified and can get paid for engagements; so, they purposefully tweet horrendous stuff to get reactions.”

Meanwhile, Meta, the same company responsible for Facebook and Instagram has launched an app called Threads, often thought of as an alternative to Twitter; they have several similarities, including their formatting and the ability to repost, besides a couple differences in access. Directly after its release, Forbes named it the ‘Fastest-Growing-App In History’, amassing 100 million users in only five days. Still, Harrisites said they do not yet think of Threads as a serious competitor to Twitter.

Putting the platforms side by side, senior Miguel Santos spoke to his experience. He said, “Threads may not live up to Twitter as much as it wants to, but the future of either platform is very uncertain considering how it’s being managed.” 

Other Twitter-like platforms have also come to people’s attention, some include Mastodon and Bluesky Social; however,as it stands, ‘X’ will remain on top for some time, according to Harrisites.