Black Twitter helped define the internet — so where will the exodus from X lead?

By Char Adams and J.J. McCorvey, NBC

Black users make up some of social media’s most engaged, influential audiences. They are now also among the thousands of people who have left X, formerly Twitter, citing a flood of bots, harassment and partisan ads surrounding the polarizing presidential election. With throngs of people leaving, “Black Twitter” may become a thing of the past as more users move to alternative text-based social media apps.

“I don’t think that Black Twitter is going to exist within the next couple of years,” said Jonathan Johnson, a 29-year-old behavioral therapist in Houston and a longtime Twitter and X user.

The future is unclear for Black Twitter, an unofficial group of users self-organized around shared cultural experiences that convenes sometimes viral discussions on everything from social issues to pop culture. It has played a key role in movements such as #SayHerName, #BlackLivesMatter and #OscarsSoWhite.

Through memes, gifs, threads and hashtags, Black social media users have been able to navigate moments like Mike Brown’s murder and the rise of Donald Trump, as well as come together to live-tweet award shows, discuss current events and watch Black-centered television shows together.

“Black Twitter is one of the most important forms of community that made the platform what it was,” said Ashon Crawley, a professor of religious studies and African American and African studies at the University of Virginia. “Social media is only important because of the social part, and if you don’t have that, people aren’t going to use” the app.

[…]

Elon Musk’s involvement in Trump’s campaign and his changes to the social media platform have prompted many people to abandon X in his two years as owner of the company. More than 115,000 accounts deactivated on the day after the election, the most dropped accounts in a single day since Musk acquired the platform, according to data from Similarweb, a third-party company that tracks social media analytics, shared with NBC News this week. Like many others, Black users have been eyeing an exit from the app since 2022, but users told NBC News that this mass exodus feels more permanent.

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