Given the recent dramas touched off by Elon in the last 2 weeks, with likely more to come, one thing worth noting is that any ambitions of turning X into the Western version of WeChat are now utterly kaput.
WeChat, if you didn’t know, is the centralised “everything app” required for living in China. It handles chat, payment, shopping and social media functions, with all the obvious privacy implications that go with that. If you’re Chinese and you’re not on WeChat you’re probably living in the woods like Tarzan.
Needless to say, at this point no one will ever trust Musk and the interests he represents with an “everything app”. Such a thing requires government cooperation and European governments in particular are already making noises about limiting the ability of Musk to spark drama in their societies. They are right to be nervous about X, for it’s immediate predecessor Twitter was instrumental in sparking the “Arab Spring”, various incarnations of “Black Lives Matter”, the Hong Kong protests of 2020 and regular waves of dissent in Iran.
For now, given the recent ban waves and migrations, X/Twitter is quite unlikely to become more than what it is now.