Xitter has moved from offering 50% off ad purchases of $250k a couple months ago to threatening removal of "gold checks" from companies that don't spend $1k.

That is not the strategy of a healthy advertising-driven company. It isn't even a strategy, that's flop-sweat.

The thing is that what matters is not the total number of users but who those users are. Anecdotally, there has been a slow exodus of people in my writer circles from Twitter, either deleting their accounts or just not using them as much. I’ve found less to bring me back each day. There might be people engaging more to make up for it, but they’re not the people in my circles.