Illustrations: Fanatic Studio/Gary Waters and Sergio Ingravalle/Ikon Images
The backlash against Twitter is becoming overwhelming. The social media network, which I still refuse to refer to by Elon Musk’s embarrassing brand name “X,” has always had a dark side, literally being described as a “hell place” by loyal users for years. Twitter has long been a delivery mechanism for virulent far-right politics to reach the political mainstream, and has played no small role in the unlikely transformation of a failed real estate mogul and reality TV star into a one-time and possibly future U.S. president.
But since Elon Musk, perhaps accidentally, bought Facebook in 2022, the voices of racist, misogynistic and homophobic trolls have grown louder and more visible. Moderation policies have weakened, banned accounts like Andrew Tate and Alex Jones have been reinstated. Misinformation has proliferated, and the loss of reputable advertisers has allowed less reputable ones to gain prominence.
Even that era now seems like a lost golden age compared to the past few weeks. Musk tweeted about “two tiers of care,” a reference to a right-wing conspiracy theory that violent anti-immigrant mobs are policed more harshly than left-wing protesters because of politics, not violence. He agrees with Nigel Farage that the Prime Minister is “the biggest threat to free speech in history.” He even used his platform to predict a civil war in the UK. Newsagent Lewis Goodall argued that if Twitter was the new social media network, we would treat it like Truth Social or Gab (outposts of the alt-right), not the “public square” of the world. Unless your politics are far-right, the reasons for leaving are becoming less and less controversial.
In fact, it’s so incontrovertible that it may be hard to understand why this is a sad moment for some. And not just because many of us have gained followers that are hard to let go of, although that is certainly a factor. For those who report and write, think and speak for a living, Twitter has been a real gem. A place to follow the news in real time, meet and learn from real experts, and occasionally chuckle. Like when a minor celebrity noticed he had eyes for a brunette woman in an Arsenal shirt and didn’t realize his “likes” were public. We’re losing what was once good.
For those of you who haven’t made a home in this network, this might sound a little sad. And I also know that I’m white, cisgender, male, and pretty much every other trait that makes life on the internet bearable. (The worst insult I’ve encountered is being told I should lose some weight…that’s true.) That said, it’s no exaggeration to say that Twitter changed my life. After nearly a decade working at trade publications that were worthwhile, even interesting, but whose names tended to make people’s eyes glaze over, it allowed me to get to know editors at more mainstream titles. That led to a job at the New Statesman, which led to everything I’m doing now. I have Twitter to thank for all of this, from podcasts to books to the fact that I have people directly paying me for my writing on Substack.
But it’s not just my job that Twitter has changed. Many of my current relationships are with people I originally met there. I’ve made some of my closest friends on Twitter, and I’ve found my significant other on Twitter. The most important relationship in my life was with someone I first met on Twitter. We met at a party, a party neither of us would have been at if it weren’t for Twitter. It may be a hellish place, but there are kids in the world right now who wouldn’t exist without Twitter.
There were the joyous days when we all stopped to watch a plane landing in a storm at Heathrow, or pedestrians trying to make their way through a big puddle in Newcastle. There were crisis moments, like a government falling or a minister’s plane about to be sacked trying to land, which we could watch live on Twitter. But there were also days when just knowing people were there helped. When someone most important to me passed away suddenly last year, the thoughts, support and actual love from people who only knew us through Twitter was truly invaluable in helping us keep the show going.
That is, I always assumed Twitter would be there until it eventually suffered a catastrophic technical failure or simply imploded. After these past few weeks, I’m not so sure. But no other place has emerged to fill the void. Threads has no reverse-chronological timeline, and its algorithms seem to prioritize weirdly critical personal stories over news-related ones. Mastodon is too small, and too designed for people who love Linux. BlueSky saw a massive exodus of users from UK Twitter, but currently lacks the reach and breadth that shaped Twitter. I like BlueSky, and I think it could be my new home on the internet. But still, something has been lost.
Nothing lasts forever, and rumors of Twitter’s demise have been floating around for as long as Twitter has existed. Maybe it’s finally over. Maybe that’s a good thing, considering what’s happened so far. But I can’t help but feel sad.
[See also: Keir Starmer’s Elon Musk problem]
Content from our partners
Source link