Bitkom survey: Fewer and fewer German companies are using X

Six out of ten German companies have scaled back their activities on billionaire Elon Musk's platform X (formerly Twitter) or stopped them altogether. The reasons for this lie not least in Musk's controversial personality. This was revealed by a representative survey of 602 companies from all sectors with 20 or more employees conducted by the digital association Bitkom.

According to the survey, 63 percent of respondents consider Elon Musk to be dangerous; 74 percent believe that people with as much influence on social media as Musk should not hold political office, Bitkom wrote in a press release on Monday. Two thirds of respondents are against political offices for active executives of large companies in general.

Since the presidential elections in the United States at the beginning of November last year, numerous users, as well as companies, sports clubs, political parties and other organizations, have turned their backs on the social network X and switched to its competitors Threads or Bluesky. Threads and X could soon be locked in a neck-and-neck race to see which of the two short messaging services has the most daily active users. X owner Elon Musk massively supported the re-elected US President Donald Trump during the US election campaign. As a "special government employee", Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) were tasked with scrutinizing and cutting US government spending after Trump took office. Musk has since left the White House and the two former "best buddies" have fallen out over Trump's tax policy.

According to the Bitkom survey, only 27% of the companies surveyed still use X. In comparison: in October 2023, the figure was 32 percent. Of the companies that use X, 58% now publish fewer posts there or no longer post any posts at all. A third (32%) post to the same extent as before; three percent of the companies surveyed now even publish more posts or only started doing so after Musk's Twitter takeover. Four percent do not post at all. Musk bought the short message service Twitter at the end of 2022 after a turbulent, months-long legal dispute for 44 billion US dollars (around 41 billion euros at the time) and later renamed it X.

Financial commitment scaled back

What is likely to hurt Musk and his platform the most: Around half of the German companies surveyed (51 percent) are now placing fewer or no paid ads on X. According to Bitkom, this figure was still 26% in fall 2023. Seven percent advertise to the same extent as before Musk's takeover, while 37 percent generally refrain from advertising on the social network. "Many companies are distancing themselves when someone simultaneously unites massive economic, political and media power," explains Bitkom CEO Dr. Bernhard Rohleder.

However, at eleven percent, only a few companies consider deleting their own company profile on X. Overall, 85 percent of all companies, including those that are not represented on the X platform, are calling for it to be more closely monitored. Four out of five respondents believe that X accelerates social division. In contrast, only 21% believe that Elon Musk is strengthening freedom of expression. Just a few days ago, the X platform's AI account Grok caused a stir with anti-Semitic comments. As a result, Poland's government called on the EU Commission to investigate possible violations of the Digital Services Act (DSA).

(akn)