Elon Musk’s new ‘user seconds’ metric is another curious chapter in X’s war on bots

Yesterday, X owner Elon Musk posted that the platform “is seeing incredible usage growth,” with a graph listing an unusual metric for a platform: total seconds. Globally, the 7-day average was 360.7 billion—with a B—seconds spent on the platform. CEO Linda Yaccarino chimed in with the somewhat confusing rejoinder that “no wonder new users are becoming heavy users 3 times faster than before.” What? Anyways.

I do believe there are still many heavy users of X, much for the same reason I don’t think competitors will steal too much of its user base—people love to rubberneck. Musk does something crazy, people flock to see and complain about it, and then he gets to tweet about active users reaching a new record high.

But why measure engagement in seconds? Musk claims that cumulative user seconds, specifically via Android and iOS, is the “hardest to game.” A source at the firm said this to me, too.

“It’s more exact, it does keep bots out of the equation,” the source told Fortune. “If you use MAU or DAU as long as a bot is logged in it’ll be counted.”

As a horribly active user of the platform, I’ve noticed that bots haven’t really gone away. In fact, Musk’s early declarations of war on bots seemed to have actually worsened the problem, attracting bots to the platform like moths to a flame. With major advertisers fleeing, the platform appears to rely on anyone with a credit card to buy ad space. Now, we have a whole lot of advertisements from users who have no posts, often with blue verified checks, and are selling everything from fake luxury goods to seemingly fake Keto Drops endorsed by Shark Tank.

If you recall, I wrote a whole Data Sheet about this problem. I even spoke to one of the owners of these spam accounts, who told me “these blue checks accounts are hacked,” hence making it easier to reliably spam the platform. That same spammer told me he makes $100k a year hocking Ethereum scams on X.

Bleeping Computer noticed this too, reporting this week about a growing trend where hackers are focusing their efforts on verified accounts linked to government and business profiles. These accounts typically feature ‘gold’ and ‘grey’ checkmarks, and are being exploited to promote cryptocurrency scams, phishing sites, and platforms with crypto drainers.

So, sure, maybe bots aren’t easily counted in the user seconds (despite them filling the platform regularly). The odd metric, though, seems to be purposefully vague. It’s hard to compare it to social media competitors, like Instagram or TikTok because no one uses it. There are also a lot of variables missing, as some Reddit users point out. For example, is the metric cumulative across all users? And how are they measured? Of course, the 7-day average over the holidays might also give the numbers a boost, since many were off work for the holidays and on their phones, one Community Note on Musk’s post explained. What’s more is that user seconds narrows it down to hardcore users, which is much of what’s left of X, so average engagement in seconds will increase. Axios reported a lot of data that showed X usage plummeting in 2023. A source at the firm said usage remained “mostly flat” last year.

Look, there’s a lot of ways to slice what’s going on at X. What the team is working on there, specifically the work on live streaming, is a good step in the right direction. If X can compete with TikTok, YouTube, and others on revenue sharing, that’d be incredible. However, they still need real advertisers and real users on the platform. Musk gets in the way of that growth quite frequently, thanks to anti-Semitic remarks and his general antics. What’s clear is that the skeleton crew at X is working hard to crank out cool features (as anyone who remembers the glacial pace of innovation at the old Twitter will attest), and sometimes they get kneecapped by Musk in a bad mood. I’m not sure X will explode in popularity this year without a lot of reflection at the C-suite level, but as an internet poster, I do hope for the best. Where else can I post about biblically accurate hackers?

With that, here are more of today’s top tech stories.

Kylie Robison

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Today’s edition was curated by Rachyl Jones.

NEWSWORTHY

Car troubles. Tesla is recalling more than 1.6 million cars in China due to problems with Autopilot and locks, regulators said on Friday. Owners can fix the issues by installing a free software update at home, so they don’t need to take their cars to a service center. The recall follows a similar one in the U.S. last month, in which regulators recalled 2 million Teslas over Autopilot features, CNBC reports. 

Musical chairs with board seats. OpenAI is reportedly in early talks with Scale AI chief Alexandr Wang and former GitHub chief Nat Friedman to fill its open board seats, following the failed coup of CEO Sam Altman and subsequent board shakeup, according to The Information. It is unclear who else is being considered.

A meeting of minds. Margrethe Vestager, the EU antitrust head, will meet with the CEOs of Apple, Alphabet, Broadcom, and Nvidia in the U.S. next week, discussing digital regulation and competition, Reuters reports. She will also meet with OpenAI’s technology and strategy chiefs, Mira Murati and Jason Kwon.

IN OUR FEED

“US politicians are extremely out of touch with talent in tech. There is a belief that if you cap immigration, jobs stay. The opposite happens. Jobs go elsewhere, tax dollars are lost, local economies suffer, and when that talent builds the next Google or Apple, it won’t be here.”

—Box CEO Aaron Levie said on X, formerly known as Twitter, after posting about how the U.S. government caps the number of annual workers receiving H-1B visas, which allow U.S. companies to hire foreign employees. The cloud company chief has previously spoken in favor of revamping the visa system to remain competitive.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

Just as Tesla loses the EV crown, Elon Musk’s biggest market in Europe pulls the rug out from under him, by Christiaan Hetzner 

What the heck is going on with headlines on X?, by Kylie Robison 

Sam Altman believes Muslim workers in the tech industry feel ‘uncomfortable speaking’ up out of fear for their careers, by Orianna Rosa Royle 

Attention AI experts: The White House wants you, by Sage Lazzaro 

Two private companies will attempt the first moon landing in 50 years—and neither one is SpaceX, by Chris Morris

Robots are solving construction’s challenges, including a workforce shortage, by Stephanie Cain

BEFORE YOU GO

Playing games. Netflix is looking at ways it can monetize its small but growing video game business, including by charging extra for some games, showing ads, and offering in-game purchases, the Wall Street Journal reports, citing sources familiar with internal conversations. The company’s game offerings have previously served as a way to keep users engaged in its series between seasons. 

The reported conversations align with what the company has said publicly about its plans. During an October earnings call, co-CEO Greg Peters said the next step for its gaming business was to “incrementally scale to a place where games have a material impact on the business,” as Fortune previously reported.