Joe Biden's bombshell revives Elon Musk's ambitions to make X the world's digital town square

The President's decision to announce his withdrawal from the 2024 race on X helps Elon Musk's case that the site is the world's digital town square.

• Joe Biden has finally withdrawn from the presidential race.
• He let the world know with a blindsiding post that was on X first.
• The move has revived Elon Musk's ambitions to make X the world's digital town square. 

Elon Musk might be a full-blown Donald Trump crusader now, but that still didn't stop Joe Biden from turning to the billionaire's social media platform to make one of the biggest announcements in his career.

That's right: Biden used X to tell the world he was pulling out of the presidential race.

On Sunday, the president — who declared only days ago that only the "Lord Almighty" could force him to quit the race for the White House — took to Musk's platform to share news that blindsided many in his party.

Of course, many Democrats saw the writing on the wall after Biden hobbled his way through a debate with Trump on June 28. By their estimation, those 90 televised minutes showed why the 81-year-old president probably didn't have another four-year term in him.

What they seem not to have foreseen, however, was that they would find out about Biden's withdrawal at the same time the rest of the world did. Perhaps they should have.

Since Musk's $44 billion takeover of Twitter in October 2022, both he and CEO Linda Yaccarino have been trying to sell the social media site as a digital "town square" where users can get real-time information about global developments ahead of everyone else.

They now have a fresh case to make for that and are ready to make the most of it. "X is where history happens," Yaccarino wrote in response to Biden's resignation post. "Truly no surrogate." She may have a point — even if the announcement was subsequently posted to other platforms.

Joseph Teasdale, head of tech at research firm Enders Analysis, told Business Insider that the site has "always had strong, active networks of high-powered professionals talking shop," despite the fact "it has never been a billion-user social network" like Instagram or Facebook.

"X's staying power is a testament to the strength and value of these networks," he said. "The president's use of the service is a good example of how X has maintained its relevance."

Alexa Pavliuc, researcher at the Oxford Internet Institute, also noted that X seemed to be a logical place for Biden to share his announcement as it's the nexus point of the main audience of journalists and politicians the president would have wanted to reach.

This has all helped build X's case as the internet's digital town square. Biden's post helps reinforce that case.

Spam and abuse

That said, there have been several signs in the months prior suggesting that it is hardly fit to be a digital town square.

As Teasdale notes, "spam is more prevalent" on the site, while the company remains in tough negotiations with advertisers who once "exited the platform en masse."

Pavliuc also notes that X's leaders have struggled to present the app as a "digital town square" that's fair for all. There are people who may "silence themselves" given they "receive abuse" when using it.

"It's important to think about comparing it to a physical town square where if you scream misogynistic or racist slurs at someone, would that be OK? Of course not," she said.

Then there's the constant plague of misinformation that has been allowed to spread on the site during critical moments, such as the Israel-Gaza conflict.

It is for this reason that people have felt sour towards the site since Musk's takeover, with research suggesting as much.

SensorTower data earlier this year showed that the X app's daily users were down 15% in February year-over-year, suggesting shrinking exposure. Meanwhile, rival app Threads was getting more daily users in the US as recently as April.

With Democrats now rallying around Kamala Harris, Musk may get a chance to sell his site as the digital town square again if the Vice President, who's now favorite to replace Biden, announces her official nomination on X.