big viewer counts are fun to look at, but this is the right call
concurrent viewers is more honest and more transparent, and it's what every other streaming platform already does
BREAKING NEWS FOR X:
X appears to have quietly changed how viewer counts work in the Live tab.
Before: public numbers were mostly total/cumulative views. Scroll past a stream for 3 seconds? You counted.
Thatโs why some lives looked like they had 80kโ100k+ people in them.
Now: the Live section is showing numbers that match concurrent viewers (people actually watching at the same time).
Many times Creators knew this but wanted to inflate their ego or brand and would flex the misleading metric.
But now, it's more accurate for everyone to see.