On March 21, 2006, Jack Dorsey posted a simple message: “just setting up my twittr”. That was, of course, the very first post on what is now best known as Twitter, renamed X by its new owner Elon Musk. The deal over this change is still being contested in court.

X has since become part of Musk’s xAI, which itself became a part of SpaceX. Under Musk, the company was cut dramatically and faced new controversies with its chatbot Grok, which dubbed itself “MechaHitler” and was used to create widespread sexual deepfakes, including those of real women and children.

While X retains a strong hold on some user groups, particularly in parts of the tech industry, it faces competition from services like Bluesky and Meta’s Threads. One report suggests that Threads recently overtook X in daily mobile users. These primarily text-based platforms are dwarfed by apps like Instagram and TikTok.

For its founder, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey sold his original tweet as an NFT for $2.9 million. However, the value of this tweet has reportedly plummeted, with the buyer unable to resell it. The story of that first tweet is now a case study in the ever-changing landscape of social media and its tumultuous history.

As AI learns to tweet, maybe it should stick to retweets—no original content please. But then again, who knows what MechaHitler might come up with next?