After more than a year away from the platform, John Oliver briefly returned to X on Monday morning to promote his latest segment on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.
During Sunday’s episode, Oliver delivered a sharply critical main segment examining the state of the social media platform under the ownership of Elon Musk, arguing that it has become an “active liability” for news and public discourse.
Near the end of the segment, Oliver noted that he had abandoned the site more than a year ago and advised viewers to consider doing the same.
“My personal advice is to not post on it at all,” he said. “I haven’t done that in over a year, although I will be going back there tomorrow to post a link to this piece before going silent again.”
He followed through on that promise Monday, briefly reactivating his account to share the segment with his followers.
“Hello again! Here’s our piece from Sunday about Twitter,” Oliver wrote, before signing off with a simple, “Bye!”
The post marked his first activity on the platform since December 2024.
In his segment, Oliver argued that Twitter has steadily deteriorated since Musk’s $44 billion acquisition in 2022, citing reduced content moderation, the reinstatement of extremist accounts, and the platform’s role in amplifying misinformation, including debunked claims that he said circulated widely ahead of the federal government’s response in Minneapolis.
“There are certain areas, like news in particular, where Twitter is now worse than useless,” Oliver said. “For breaking news, it’s an active liability.”
Oliver closed the segment by echoing one of Musk’s earliest—and most widely mocked—moments as Twitter’s new owner, when he arrived at company headquarters in 2022 carrying a sink and posted a photo captioned “let that sink in.”
“The Twitter we may’ve once relied on and the Twitter that was fun and occasionally useful is just well and truly gone,” Oliver said, raising a sink onto his desk. “And collectively, while it might be sad, it might be past time for all of us to…let that sink in.”
Watch Oliver’s compete segment on Musk’s Twitter at the top of this post.
The interview with Elon looked like something right out of TV sitcom Silicon Valley with washed up tech narcissist Gavin Belson trying desparately to stay relevant while his sycophantic guru sidekick fawns over all his ego and atrocious behavior.