He doesn’t need to kick them off. Its more advantageous for him to keep them on his platform, where he can influence who sees their posts; and for how long; and in what context. He can suppress messages that he doesn’t like; and twist narratives; and promote messages he does like - all while making “X” seem like a useful platform to get news and to reach followers.

The high engagement numbers of X do make it look like a place worth staying on. But make no mistake, Musk can (and does) use his control of the platform to change what people see there for his own benefit.

I’m sure they’ll make good use of it, and return when they’re finished - if possible.

(and my axe, too.)

I don’t know how many users reddit has, but it is a lot more than lemmy. Lemmy is quite small in terms of number of users.

But I think focusing on relative numbers of users is a mistake. Forty thousand people is still a lot of people. And we can see that it is enough people to create a vibrant community with a steady stream of good content and conversations. So the fact that it is small compared to other social media is not really relevant, in my opinion. Having a thousand times more users doesn’t make things a thousand times better - that’s for sure.

(That said, I do think its worth noting if the number of users is going up or down… because if there was a significant downward trend, that would be a bad sign.)