The Great Migration
How Substack became the new town square
as X descended into a propaganda machine
In October 2022, Elon Musk completed his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter. What followed was one of the most dramatic corporate implosions in media history — a systematic dismantling of content moderation, a mass exodus of advertisers, journalists, and public figures, and a precipitous collapse in both revenue and trust. Into the void stepped Substack: an independent platform where writers own their audiences, readers pay directly for quality, and the algorithm serves subscribers, not engagement-bait. This is a data-driven account of that divergence.
User Growth:
One Up, One Down
As X shed users and cultural credibility, Substack compounded growth quarter after quarter — building a paid audience that rivals major print outlets.
US Adult Usage Rate
Stagnant then collapsing post-acquisition
The Alternatives Rising: Threads & Bluesky MAU
Millions of Monthly Active Users as users seek alternatives to X
Revenue & Valuation:
The Great Divergence
X revenue has collapsed 51% from its 2021 peak. Substack has grown its ARR nearly 20x in five years. The market is rendering its verdict.
Content Quality & Trust:
By the Numbers
Academic research and advertiser behavior tell a damning story: X has become a platform where hate speech is up, high-quality information is down, and the people tasked with policing both have been fired.
The Advertiser Exodus:
Follow the Money
Nearly 300 brands have slashed advertising on X. The top 10 advertisers cut spending by 70–99%. The result: $5.9 billion in estimated lost revenue versus X's pre-acquisition trajectory.
Brand Spending Collapse: 2022 vs 2025
Top advertiser spending on X — dramatic year-over-year collapse
Rolling 12-Month Ad Revenue (MediaRadar)
Consecutive annual declines in advertising revenue
Major Brands That Pulled Spending
App & Traffic Trends:
The Momentum Shift
Threads has overtaken X in daily mobile users. Substack's app has become its #1 growth engine. The data shows where digital attention is moving.
X vs Threads: Mobile Daily Active Users
The crossover moment — Threads surpasses X in daily mobile users by Jan 2026
Substack App: Engagement Flywheel
X: The Traffic Erosion
The Exodus:
Who Left & Where They Went
The migration is not just demographic — it is institutional. News organizations, journalists, politicians, and cultural figures have all abandoned X, many moving their audiences to Substack.
Leaving X
The Departures
Moving to Substack
Building Audiences
In Their Own Words
The exodus is being narrated in real time. These are some of the voices defining the moment.
X is a toxic media platform.
Going off this platform now. It has become a toxic cesspool.
The people who made Twitter fun have all given up. There's nothing worth sticking around for anymore.
You can't make a good deal with a bad person.
Places like Substack that allow you to have a direct one-on-one relationship with the audience have never been more valuable.
Under Elon Musk’s leadership, X has increasingly shifted toward serving his political agenda. The tipping point for me was the deliberate manipulation of algorithms to boost his own posts after he endorsed Donald Trump.
Starting Monday I won’t be continuing at this site. For a while Twitter was a way to do journalism education in public, for a public — and for free. I think I was effective at times in that role. I no longer know how that’s done.
The intensification of Musk’s activism, the formalization of his position within the Trump power apparatus and the increasing toxicity of the exchanges led us to come to the conclusion that the usefulness of our presence weighs less than the many suffered side-effects.
It would be a disservice to the serious work you all do here to continue to share it on a platform that is associating the federal charter for public media with an abandoning of editorial independence or standards.
Since Elon Musk took over, the platform has increasingly merged with his and Donald Trump’s political ambitions.
I feel like Twitter back in the day was kind of everything for journalists and writers — it was like a job board; place of idea generation; a little diary.
Head to Head:
The Full Ledger
A structured comparison across every meaningful dimension — business model, creator economics, content quality, and trajectory.
| Metric | SUBSTACK | X (TWITTER) |
|---|---|---|
| Primary Revenue | Subscriptions | Advertising |
| Creator Revenue Share | 87% | Variable / Limited |
| Content Ownership | Creator owns list | Platform controls distribution |
| Algorithm Goal | Maximize subscriptions | Maximize time-on-platform |
| Paid Subscribers | 5M+ (2025) | N/A (ad model) |
| 2025 Revenue | $45M ARR ↗ | ~$2.5B ↙ (declining) |
| Valuation Trend | Rising — $1.1B unicorn | Falling — 91% brand value loss |
| Hate Speech | No systemic increase | +50% post-acquisition |
| Trust & Safety | Community standards maintained | 80% of safety engineers cut |
| Brand Safety (Ads) | Subscription model — no ad risk | Only 4% of marketers approve |
| Notable Recent Additions | Buttigieg, Acosta, Krugman, Hasan, Reich, Vance | — |
| Notable Recent Departures | — | Guardian, NPR, Le Monde, Media Matters, Stephen King |