The fact that you can pay to have your replies higher (plus the suppression of posts with links) on X are part of this. The other reality is that for me and my community / friends who used to be active on Twitter.. they're just not participating anymore.

It's become like Facebook became a decade or so ago. Total ghost-town with only some eccentric folks still posting. In the case of X, everything I see seems to be connected with some kind of ecosystem around Elon, Trump and right-wing influencers. Time to move on.