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Elon Musk admits X 'may fail, as so many have predicted'

An illustration of the X logo next to a black-and-white sketch of Elon Musk
Elon Musk renamed Twitter as X.

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  • Elon Musk seemed to suggest that his takeover of X, formerly known as Twitter, could be doomed. 
  • The billionaire said Saturday that X "may fail," but that the company would try to succeed. 
  • The X owner also claimed that there are "no great social networks right now." 

Elon Musk appeared to admit that his $44 billion takeover of X could be doomed. 

The owner of the platform formerly known as Twitter said Saturday that X "may fail."

"The sad truth is that there are no great 'social networks' right now," he said on X. "We may fail, as so many have predicted, but we will try our best to make there be at least one." 

Meta launched its X rival called Threads on July 5 and quickly amassed more than 100 million signups, Time magazine reported, citing data from Sensor Tower.

However, six weeks later the platform's daily active user rate has plummeted from a peak of 44 million after Threads launched to about 10 million, data from Similarweb shows, per the report. 

Musk's efforts to purge the platform of bots and turn it into a "super-app" doesn't yet appear to be working.

Mashable's Matt Binder found this week that about 42% of his followers on X had no followers themselves, meaning they could be bots.

Musk's post comes after he came under fire this week for saying he'll remove the blocking feature from the platform. Activist Monica Lewinsky urged him and CEO Linda Yaccarino to "rethink" the move.

"hey @elonmusk + @lindayaX …please rethink removing the block feature. as an anti-bullying activist (and target of harassment) i can assure you it's a critical tool to keep people safe online. - that woman," she wrote.

In May Fidelity wrote down the value of its stake in the company then still known as Twitter, giving it a value of about $15 billion – or just a third of what Musk paid, The Wall Street Journal Reported.

X didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider, made outside normal working hours.

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