A lot of people stay because of lingering attachment to the platform. As weird as it is, changing the branding subconsciously tells the human brain "This is a new platform" and that makes switching mentally easier.

Elon rate limits tweets

i sleep

Elon changes the logo

real shit??

I've already had several non-tech people say something along the lines of "What the heck is this X thing on my phone?"

I gotta wonder how many other people are just impulse uninstalling something they don't recognize off their phone as well, since ol' Musky boi did this with basically zero user notice as well.

The blue bird was the last thing they had left

I think a good amount of it is also "the straw that broke the camel's back." Twitter users have been taking abuse after abuse. Like many others have stated, they use Twitter to follow specific people. If those people aren't on other platforms, then they're going to stay. But after a certain point, the cost becomes too high. Now the platform is rebranded and now it looks as alien as it's begun to feel. I think that's why so many are once again leaving. Before they could just ignore everything else going on and try to move on with their day. Not there's a big, fat X reminding them of how much they're starting to/already hate the platform now.

Renaming Twitter to 𝕏 is probably the straw that break the camel's back to those people.

I'd like to think it's people finally realizing "Holy shit he IS an idiot" but that might be too optimistic

Because tweeting and being on Twitter is culturally relevant. Twxing and being on =..,,,/''''°°X°°""/,,,...= is sad and cringe.

People run away from things which are sad and cringe.

The logo change has brought out a new wave of articles and tweets about it, and people go "oh no that's right I'm on twitter! Well THIS is the final straw! Thank goodness there were all these hate articles and tweets that reminded me I was supposed to be angry!"

Also, many of the people who "jump ship" are right back on Twitter within a week. mastodon.social has an entire graveyard of celebrity accounts that haven't been posted to in months because the outraged celebrities just went back to twitter.

I'm happy for Mastodon (I run a fediverse instance and the more users there are the more chances of interesting people and the like), and some of those people do realize they like the vibe more and stay, and a lot of those bumps are significant for the platform. The thing is, we're talking a few hundred thousand, maybe a million accounts of 200 million daily active users on twitter.

Remember why Ray Kroc wanted McDonald's... because of the name/brand. Anybody could make a hamburger/shake shop or shack but he had to have the name because the name was a seller.

Nobody thinks X is cool other than Elon musk and him switching to it is another signifier of how uncool Twitter has become. Every little thing adds to the flow of traffic to the exit.

people do weird things

This will be one of the first "in your face" things that is immediately noticable by a finicky user base that only understands and associates value to popular brands. Musk just removed the popular and familiar brand that people are comfortable with, so why would those people stay?

None of it was fine, people have been browsing for alternatives ever since Elon Musk took over.

At most, many hoped things would ultimately stay the same, which they definitely didn't. The biggest hurdle is that a lot of people there are waiting for their friends and favorite content creators to pick what place they will move to, and content creators are extra hesitant because they don't know if they will have as much following and reach as they used to. I see a bunch of smaller creators pretty much mourning their careers.

Made a mastodon account yesterday mainly out of curiosity. Never been to Twitter.

So they might be counting just me lol

People really love their cute animal logos I guess, #whatcanyoudo?

And probably won't matter much.

This user surge will probably go crawling right back in a week or two.