Let’s not fool ourselves. Twitter/X was never the Garden of Eden. It’s always had weeds and wildlife and waist-deep swamps. But now it’s somewhere between a swamp and a jungle and a cesspit, and it might be time to quietly slink away and let it deteriorate into toxic irrelevance.
I’ve been on Twitter since January 2009, when Elon Musk was still tinkering with an electric sports car called the Tesla Roadster. When he joined Twitter six months later, he, like most of us, was no doubt delighted by all that he could find in this new digital forum of ideas and conversation.
For better or worse, the old gatekeepers of information and connection were gone. This was a place where we gathered and talked to one another, but also to entertain, provoke, tease and be entertained. At its best, it was a bran-tub of discovery and education, a kaleidoscope of news. Traditional hierarchies mattered less. What you said mattered as much, if not more, than who you were.
It can be tuned to be an echo chamber if you like, and equally it can be tuned to challenge, surprise, or frustrate.
Sure, there were bots and trolls and the occasional sockpuppet, but it felt like at least a semi-controlled space. There was some meaningful validation of its most prominent users. There was a trust and safety team looking out for bad, misleading, or harmful information, and a curation team trying to spread the good information.
Over time, good users developed a certain etiquette, a set of best practices. One-way conversations weren’t as useful as two-way conversations. They were more like arguments than megaphones. If you did something wrong and someone pointed it out to you, it was considered polite to clarify or correct it. That’s how you built trust. And for many people in this new field, trust was important.
Well, you know what happened after that. I don’t know if it was planned or accidental, but some weird millionaire boy bought it. He fired all the gardeners, groundskeepers, and park managers. He brought back all the tyrants, hoodlums, liars, and con artists that had been kept out by the previous park managers.
That was bad enough, but then this weird kid decided his opinion on everything mattered way too much, and flooded his timeline with a barrage of fact-free assumptions, conspiracy theories, boasts and insults. He amplified hatred, hate-mongering and outright misinformation. He told advertisers to “fuck you” and then sued when they did. A powerful European commissioner warned him of the consequences of turning his platform into a sewer. He, too, was told to fuck you.
So we’re left wondering why we’re still here. After the recent riots, the writer George Monbiot wondered aloud why he was staying “now that Musk has turned this platform into an incubator for fascism.” His answer: “Because of this staunch political belief. I must not be pushed out by the far right.”
That’s all well and good, but I think most of us have a more practical reason. It took me 15 years to curate a diverse and fascinating community of 5,000 people to follow. 18,500 tweets later, I have nearly 250,000 followers, the equivalent of a large city. On Threads, I’m part of a small village, and on BlueSky, I’m just a small hamlet.
There’s the daunting feeling of starting over. And then there’s the reality that, for journalists at least, Twitter remains an incredibly useful tool because of its scale: an outpouring of comment, ripostes, jokes and news, some of it true.
Then there’s the question of if not Twitter, then where? Mastodon is a good idea, but too unwieldy. Threads is lively and simple enough if Meta doesn’t take you out in spots. Bluesky seems like a cozy space where a lot of refugees are starting to gather, but can it withstand billionaires, and is there any guarantee it can employ enough gardeners and park rangers?
In an ideal world, this is how it should be, I think: A good campaign group (you know who they are) should thoroughly research alternatives to Twitter/X. Tell us who can provide the most reliable, decent, honest, well-managed platform that won’t be taken over by some billionaire’s kid.
So give us a date. Let’s call it “X-odus Day.” A day when all of us who don’t want to wake up in a timeline filled with white supremacists and ranting bigots join hands and jump. We all jump to the same place at the same time and we rebuild what is worthwhile. An almighty X-it.
Can you imagine how furious this boy will be? If he lashes out with vulgar language at rebellious advertisers and wary regulators, you can hardly imagine the impotent rage he will unleash when all the most interesting and insightful people on his platform have moved on elsewhere?
Elite journalists will preach freedom of speech. But no one is banned here. Children are free to choose the space they want. And many of us (hopefully left, right or center) may be free to choose not to be there.
He will be left with his own band of “reunited friends”: Donald Trump, Tommy Robinson, Alex Jones and all the other bullies, cranks, racists and weirdos he has made a point of welcoming to his no-rules platform, as well as other unsavory and controversial figures like Nigel Farage and Laurence Fox.
But many of the most rational, interesting, human, thoughtful people will be gone. The good conversation, the real fun, the real news will happen elsewhere. He will be left with a shell of little value, financial or otherwise. His main competition will be Trump’s Truth Social. It will be interesting to watch the two of them spar.
George Monbiot might say it’s better to stay and fight, but the experience of the past few months has shown us that this man-child’s cult-like followers are not there for an argument. Say something they don’t agree with and they’ll call you a “hook-nosed Jew” or a “nance” or a “communist”. It’s literally impossible to argue with these people, assuming they are human beings.
With the US elections looming, I don’t think this will work, there’s too much at stake to jump in before November 5th. But after that, we should have an X-it Day, join hands and jump in together. Let the owners of the old space rant and rave about regulators, advertisers, leftists, Muslims, whoever they choose. We won’t have to listen anymore.
The new universe won’t be a Garden of Eden — there’s no such place anywhere on social media — but we can collectively show that we’re better than childish humans think we are, and maybe childish humans will get bored and head back to their spaceships.