X Marks The Drop For European Users

Everything is super, over at X (the social media service formerly known as Twitter), which has shed around 10 percent of its European users in the past six months.

An anti X poster in London’s Camden Town urges people to ditch their accounts – click to enlarge

The figures were revealed in X’s latest transparency report [PDF], which the company compiles to comply with the European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA).

Between February 1, 2024, and July 31, 2024, the social media platform reported 105,994,838 “EU Active Recipients of the Service”.

From October 1, 2024, to March 31, 2025, that figure dropped to 94,830,300. Logged-in X users had also dropped from 67 million to just over 61 million in the same period.

The exodus of European users from Elon Musk’s online mouthpiece is not surprising, considering the amplification the billionaire’s platform has given to voices that might not be palatable to European tastes – such as rightwing German party AfD’s leader Alice Weidel. Musk is also a staunch supporter of the Trump administration, whose rhetoric has not gone down well in Europe.

We asked Musk’s AI chatbot, Grok, why Europeans were leaving X, and it responded, “Europeans are leaving the social media platform X primarily due to concerns over misinformation, hate speech, and a perceived decline in content moderation since Elon Musk’s acquisition in 2022.”

The chatbot noted that one of the factors behind the move was “Many Europeans are migrating to platforms like Bluesky, which they view as offering better moderation and less toxicity.”

Musk acquired Twitter in 2022 for $44 billion. He reinstated previously banned accounts, including that of former Trump advisor Steve Bannon, and rebranded the platform as “X.” Advertisers initially opted to spend their marketing dollars elsewhere, although some have since started returning to the platform.

X was acquired by another Musk enterprise, xAI, earlier this year in a deal that valued X, when debt was included, at $45 billion.

Xitter is not the only Musk business to feel the pain in Europe. Europeans have also shown disdain for the billionaire’s car business by steering clear of Tesla vehicles. While the region reported a year-on-year increase in battery electric vehicle (BEV) sales, purchases of Tesla cars dropped precipitously in some countries. The brand’s sales in Germany fell by nearly 60 percent in January 2025 compared to the same period in 2024. French registrations were down by 63 percent.

This may also be because Tesla’s vehicle lineup looks a little stale nowadays compared to the competition, which could be a factor in customer sentiment. However, X has no such excuse – users will seek out content that appeals to them, and in Europe, the platform does not appear to be scratching that itch for million of now ex-users. ®

Original Source