This decision has been brewing for a while now, but it’s time to give up on Twitter, a platform which has now been comprehensively captured by racists, the far right and the culture warriors. Twitter was always problematic, but since it was taken over by controversial billionaire Elon Musk it has been transformed into a foghorn for Musk’s own increasingly far right wing views. It’s difficult to escape the conclusion that this was always Musk’s intention when he bought the platform and renamed it X.
Twitter, I refuse to call it X, has now become the 21st century social media version of the Völkischer Beobachter, the infamous Nazi newspaper published in Germany between 1920 and 1945. Like its German forerunner Twitter is now dedicated to the propagation of hatred for minorities and has no regard for truth or for the social harm it fosters. Twitter was central to whipping up the racist hatred and Islamophobia which drove the recent racist riots in England. It is a cesspit of misinformation and far right abuse and its owner arrogantly believes his obscene wealth places him above the law and norms of social decency the rest of us are bound by.
Upon buying Twitter Musk, in the name of so called freedom of speech, reinstated a large number of accounts that had previously been removed from the platform for spreading misinformation and hate speech, these included the accounts of right wing British nationalist hate mongers such as Katie Hopkins and vile misogynists like Andrew Tate. He also reinstated the account of former president and pathological liar Donald Trump, which had previously been removed due to Trump’s repeated lies about everything from the result of the 2020 election to his weight and height.
Musk combined this open door policy to liars, racists and misogynists with an evisceration of the platform’s moderation team. This had the predictable result of producing a marked increase in racist, sexist, homophobic, and transphobic abuse. Almost overnight Twitter became a deeply unwelcoming place to anyone who is not white, male, heterosexual, cisgender, able bodied, or who simply rejects the beliefs and twisted values of the hard right.
He made other changes, including changing Twitter’s algorithms to push paid accounts to the top of users’ feeds, meaning users’ feed were suddenly full of Tweets from Musk’s sycophantic fan boys. Other changes seemed innocuous at first, but have had a pernicious effect.
One such was the decision to make likes of a Tweet invisible to everyone except the person who posted the Tweet. This made it safe for people to like racist or offensive posts under the cover of anonymity. However although likes are invisible to users, they are not invisible to Twitter’s algorithms which preferentially push posts with more likes to the top of users’ feeds. Log into Twitter these days and your feed is full of racist posts from accounts which you don’t follow. Twitter is almost unusable these days, unless you enjoy swimming in a cesspit of racism and bigotry. As a gay man who is now in his 60s, I remember the casual racism, sexism and homophobia of the 1970s. I had hoped that the world had moved on from that bigotry and ignorance, but it is alive and punching down on Twitter.
The site is also pushing the accounts of far right figures. I have never interacted on Twitter with far right British nationalist accounts but for the past few weeks Twitter has featured the lying fascist thug Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, the so-called ‘Tommy Robinson’ as an account I am recommended to follow. Hell no. Yaxley-Lennon, who is such an English patriot that he lives in Spain on an Irish passport, was central to the misinformation and racist pot stirring behind the recent spate of racist and Islamophobic rioting in England. The real question here is why Musk’s platform pushing him so aggressively? The only plausible reason can be that the site is pushing the kinds of accounts that Musk himself interacts with. He has turned Twitter into his creature, and it is ugly and utterly bereft of empathy or compassion.
I have kept a close eye on page referrals to this blog from Twitter and there are only a handful each month. It seems there is as much point in continuing to post links to this blog on Twitter as there would be in posting links to this blog in the comments section of the Daily Mail or Trump’s vanity site Truth social. This blog has over 8,500 email subscribers and is actively shared on Facebook. I no more need Twitter than Twitter needs me.
I am not kidding myself on here. I am one not very important user of a social media giant, but Twitter lives or dies by its users and if enough of us who are tolerant and humane and politically progressive boycott the platform, advertisers will flee from it in larger numbers than they have done already and the site will turn into an irrelevant toxic waste dump spewing hatred and bigotry into the void, avoided by anyone with any sense.
Other than posting links to new blog posts I have not been an active user of Twitter for a very long time. I ceased to look at my Twitter notifications a long time ago, invariably they are full of personal abuse from anti-independence British nationalists who never engage with any points I have made but name call and throw insults, some of which are clearly defamatory. These are not people who are open to having their minds changed, or even prepared to discuss issues calmly or rationally. I have robust mental health and have faced down bullies far more intimidating than the anonymous frothers of Twitter, but there’s little point in continuing to use a platform which has sold itself so comprehensively to the lunacies of the far right.
I will no longer post links to new blog posts on Twitter and will no longer use the site. I refuse to give Musk the benefit of my clicks and attention. However I will not delete my Twitter account, as I don’t want to allow some malicious actor to take over the weegingerdug user ID and masquerade as me. I will park it instead. Maybe one day if Musk bores of the new toy he has broken the site will become usable again, but I am not holding my breath. Meanwhile I will look into using Threads and alternative platforms instead. I have an account on Threads which I registered some while ago in order to reserve my weegingerdug user name, but have never made use of it.
I am not telling anyone else what to do, you may feel there is value in continuing to use Twitter, but I no longer see any. I’m done with it. It’s vile, nasty, negative, and toxic and I want no part of it.
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Within Cornwall the map is available at Kowsva, 6 Artists Muse, Heartlands, Poll/Pool – The Kowethas shop. They are also available from The Cornish Store in Aberfala/Falmouth. Other outlets in Cornwall will follow soon.
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