If the current situation persists, Musk may forget all hope of X (Twitter) reaching Meta’s $1.3 trillion valuation.

The war between Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg seems to have come to an end.

Elon Musk may be losing hope of surpassing his arch-rival, Mark Zuckerberg.

Elon Musk remains the world’s richest person, worth $228 billion thanks to his stakes in Tesla and SpaceX. But he has gotten X into a number of controversies in recent weeks that threaten to push it further behind Zuckerberg’s media empire.

Elon Musk, the billionaire who spent nearly two years running X in San Francisco, has pushed advertisers to leave the platform and unleashed a flood of misinformation about political events on X.

This has directly led to a serious decline in revenue and reputation for himself and the company as they seek to outdo Zuckerberg, who so angered Musk when he launched X rival Threads last year that a physical fight almost broke out.

Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg has seen his net worth increase by nearly $53 billion this year to $181 billion.

If the current situation persists, Musk could lose any hope of X ever reaching Meta’s $1.3 trillion valuation, which would make the platform worth far less than the $44 billion he paid for Twitter in 2022.

The war seems to be over.

Elon Musk.

One of Musk’s biggest challenges in turning X into a rival to Zuckerberg’s social media platform is generating revenue.

Since taking control of the platform, Musk has repeatedly battled advertisers who have left or threatened to leave over concerns that misinformation would thrive under his stewardship.

This is a big issue for X, with Musk venting his frustration about the issue last year after telling advertisers to “fuck themselves” and trying to force users to buy ad-free subscriptions.

Revenue decline

X’s revenue fell 25% from the first quarter of the year to $114 million and was 53% lower than the same period last year, The New York Times reported this week, citing internal documents.

Meanwhile, Meta has seen a huge increase in advertising revenue since then, allowing the company to continue investing in exciting new areas like artificial intelligence. In the second quarter of this year, revenue (largely driven by advertising) increased 22% year over year to $39 billion.

On August 6, Musk and CEO Linda Yaccarino announced that X had filed a lawsuit in federal court in Texas against the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM), a trade group, over a boycott that has cost X billions of dollars.

In Musk’s words, this was a declaration of war on the very people he needed to boost X’s sagging revenue.

The lawsuit appears to have threatened the trade group, which GARM told members it would “cease” operations following Musk’s legal threat.

While X owners will certainly see this as a win, it indirectly further undermines an already troubled relationship with advertisers.

Misinformation

Since riots broke out in the UK in late July, X has faced multiple accusations of helping to spread disinformation that could incite further violence.

Research released this week by the Center for Countering Digital Hate found that X helped generate 434 million views for posts by extremist figure Tommy Robinson (real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon) during the UK riots. Between July 29 and August 5, posts averaged 54.3 million views per day on X—five times the daily views before the riots.

It is worth noting that Musk, who has some 193 million followers on X, played a key role in allowing misinformation to spread so freely. In one instance, the X owner spread a post that included a fake headline from a British newspaper.

Owner X circulated a post that included a fake headline from a British newspaper. Photo: Business Insider

According to The Financial Times, X has resisted requests from British officials to remove the controversial posts.

Prime Minister Kier Starmer said on Friday that Britain’s laws against online disinformation will be reviewed.

Of course, there are other platforms that play a role in facilitating the spread of misinformation, such as the messaging app Telegram.

But it’s these puzzling moves that have hampered Elon Musk’s efforts to outdo Zuckerberg in his own social media game and his plans to expand X’s appeal.