You could say X has joined the streaming wars: owner Elon Musk announced that the X TV app, teased earlier this year, is now available on select Amazon Fire TVs, Google TVs, and select LG panels.
If your TV doesn’t fall into any of these categories, don’t worry: you won’t miss anything.
A short teaser video included with the beta app announcement shows what appears to be Google’s version of the app, complete with a typical streaming video interface, along with links to videos from right-wing dog whistle Tucker Carlson and accounts for SpaceX and Tesla, among the platform’s handful of original programming. But the actual app (at least the version for Amazon Fire TV) bears no resemblance to videos and has even less content.
Currently, the X TV app is just a video streaming system for X apps: you need an X account to log in, and it shows a curated list of X videos that are already on the platform, although the default recommendations that seem to be given are really terrible for anyone who doesn’t share Musk’s political views.
Danny Gallagher
Though I was using a throwaway account that didn’t follow many users, the videos the X TV app served up to me on first viewing included a video of Megyn Kelly accusing Tim Waltz of “stolen honor,” a report by right-wing social media influencer Andy Ngo, and Carlson’s fawning interview with historian Darryl Cooper, who plays up historical revisionism by calling Winston Churchill “the greatest villain of World War II.”
X TV’s video library reflects its users: after years of leaning liberal, its most active demographic today is conservative fans eager to dangle whatever engaging content X can dangle at them. The videos featured on the show will entertain those users, and Musk’s fan club may be ecstatic that a streaming app is finally coming to smart TVs, but even if you do get in on the demo, it’s a disappointingly basic app compared to rival Rumble.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/streaming/the-x-tv-app-is-out-now-and-yes-it-really-sucks-204931559.html?src=rss
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