Why 'The Diary of a CEO' star Steven Bartlett says he can't do his job without X — and isn't a Mark Zuckerberg fan

• Star podcaster Steven Bartlett favors X to keep up with a fast-paced news cycle.
• He also expressed concern that AI would accelerate the decline of creators' social reach.
• That's why he's focusing on building direct relationships with his audience through events and more.

"The Diary of a CEO" host Steven Bartlett is close to catching Joe Rogan in subscribers on YouTube and has become the No. 1 business podcast on Spotify in the US. But when it comes to staying up on the news, it's X that he prizes.

"I just find it like a day ahead, especially on subjects I care about in a rapidly changing world, like AI, frankly," the star podcaster said, speaking at an event to announce a $400 million creator venture with Authentic Brands Group.

Elon Musk-owned X has dipped slightly in recent years as a news source but remains a go-to for 12% of US adults, behind Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok, according to 2025 Pew Research Center data. Among users of the platform, though, 57% regularly get news there, a higher percentage than among users of the other platforms.

"I need to be very quickly up to date as an interviewer," Bartlett said. "And yesterday night, we did a big debate interview here in Manhattan with the three biggest experts in AI safety. You can imagine how quickly that moves. I actually have to have a screen in real time when I'm interviewing to see if the news is changing."

Bartlett hit on another platform during the conversation — in a far less complimentary way.

Bartlett spoke about the importance of creators controlling their own destinies. He recalled the early days of social media, when platforms gave publishers traffic in exchange for posting.

"Back then, it was Facebook. It was Twitter and Snapchat, and we thought we owned those audiences," he said. "The big publishers at the time, the BuzzFeeds of the world — we thought because we had Facebook likes, that was a relationship. And over time, we saw that everybody eventually gets Zucked." (That was a reference to Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg.)

Bartlett mentioned that, at one point years ago, organic reach for a meme account run by his former social agency, Social Chain, plunged by 50% on Facebook.

"Not just us, all of our competitors, almost exactly, eerily exactly 50%," he said.

Bartlett said Meta's latest earnings call was another warning sign.

Meta described on the July call how it was using LLMs to analyze Instagram posts and reels to inform what content it shows users, and that it planned to expand their use to Facebook.

Bartlett said that as Meta relies more on AI in this way, it'll make it harder for publishers to reach their followers on its platforms.

"There's going to come a time where it doesn't matter if you have 1 million followers or 2 million followers," he said. "Zuck's going to just decide who I reach."

With predictable organic reach declining, Bartlett, like many other publishers, has turned to forging direct relationships with fans. In addition to events, his company has eyed a membership program to deepen its relationship with its audience.

"Relationships are more durable than algorithms," he said. "And so this even speaks to the type of content to make."