Twitter is going to the dogs, and we should be sad about it – but sometimes you have to know when to let go.
That’s right, I said Twitter. I’m sorry, but I can’t take the name ‘X’ seriously. It has, and always will give me the seediest vibes. I want to tweet and shitpost, not google something which feels not-safe-for-work.
I remember signing up for Twitter on 26th August 2010 – specific, I know, but forgive me, it was my first day of secondary school. At that time, Twitter was the place to be; slightly more mysterious than Facebook, and a gateway to a wider world beyond my beloved MSN. A screenshot of the Twitter homepage in 2010 declared it to be a ‘rich source of instant information’ and as we witnessed the maturation of the true information age, it couldn’t have been more exciting.
Of course, I was 11 (let’s ignore the minimum account holder age…it was a different time), I wasn’t looking to find out what David Cameron was up to, or for updates on Barack Obama’s re-election campaign. I wanted to tweet about my favourite actor from Coronation Street that I’d spent that whole summer obsessing over (which most of my friends and family thought was weird). Joining Twitter was the first time I found my tribe, and it continued. I’ve had several rebrands over the years, from dedicating my account to One Direction, to realising I probably needed to stop tweeting about Dan and Phil and Emmerdale on my main account if I wanted to be taken seriously. But the fact remains – Twitter has always been a place to be myself.
Since 2020, I’ve used my main account, @howverykk, to tweet about politics and current affairs. Now in my twenties, I am actually interested in what politicians and the powerful are up to and for years Twitter was the place to get that news. During the pandemic, I scrolled Twitter while Nicola Sturgeon delivered briefings, getting the latest updates even when I couldn’t watch the real thing.
At The Gaudie we value Twitter too. During the University’s botched plans to cull modern language teaching, and the subsequent Save UoA Languages campaign, Gaudie reporters were breaking news and finding news, all on the bird app. In 2023, when we revealed Principal George Boyne wanted striking staff to ‘feel pain along the way’, more than 364,000 people saw the post, with the article being picked up by several national news outlets, including STV and The Scotsman.
However, the platform has steadily declined since Elon Musk acquired it in October 2022, becoming almost unrecognisable from the safe, vibrant space it once was. When the billionaire first took the helm, the site had reached a peak of 368.4 million active monthly users worldwide according to Statista. It’s hard to find reliable stats since the takeover, but regardless, the quality of the content has certainly decreased. After Musk’s recent Nazi salute, I believe it’s time we all left for good, no matter how hard it may be.
But why should you leave Twitter?
Firstly, Elon Musk. There are many reasons why he is a problematic man. In 2023, the Twitter owner responded to a tweet accusing Jewish people of hatred against ‘whites’, declaring the original poster’s opinion to be “the actual truth”.
More recently, Musk has aligned himself with far-right ideologies, including spending over a quarter of a billion US dollars supporting Donald Trump’s MAGA movement. Do we really want the owner of one of the world’s most powerful social media sites to have such far-right, damaging views?
Musk’s billionaire status, estimated at $436bn USD, is far more than any person needs, and it highlights the power imbalance at play – I do not believe it is possible to accumulate that much wealth without exploiting the most vulnerable in society, and, I do not know about you, but I want to support as little of these kinds of people as possible.
Secondly, the changes Musk implemented on Twitter have drastically decreased the quality of the content while simultaneously increasing the harm it creates. According to the Network Contagion Research Institute, just twelve hours after Musk’s takeover, the use of a prominent racial slur had increased by almost 500%. Six months after the takeover, Twitter’s verification system became subscription only. As celebs like Bette Midler called Musk a ‘worm’ for removing her blue tick, your average joe could finally fulfil their dreams of being verified or having ‘X Premium’, as it was rebranded to. All this did was remove the safety blanket of trust from genuinely influential accounts, instead giving an air of importance to anyone willing to pay the fee. This is not to mention the myriad of policy changes implanted, like removing the policies banning deadnaming transgender individuals or spreading covid misinformation.
To add a more recent example to the list, a video of a Sydney Bishop being brutally murdered circulated on the platform. While other social media sites removed the clip promptly, Musk’s Twitter refused, even after the Australian internet safety regulator requested its removal. We know it is important that harmful content is removed quickly – and that was never more apparent than when it emerged the Southport killer Axel Rudakubana watched the clip in the hours before savagely murdering three young girls and attempting to murder another 8 children and 2 adults.
This is not even to mention the degradation in content – and for me, that is all linked to one key policy change: ‘freedom of speech, not freedom of reach’. Where previously an account would be suspended or banned for spreading harmful content, Twitter says it instead limits the reach of problematic content. I do not believe this to be true, and as soon as Musk allowed previously banned accounts to return – like the misogynist Andrew Tate and convicted felon Donald Trump – harmful rhetoric was spread all over the site. It is now a regular occurrence to see vile tweets about women, marginalised and vulnerable people. Twitter, once a site for everyone, has turned into a cesspit.
At first, it was easy to block and mute accounts like Andrew Tate, or to simply report problematic posts, but the problem runs deeper now. The owner of the site proudly giving the Nazi salute, not once but twice is the final straw.
Don’t get me wrong, I agree that it is hard to say goodbye. For 15 years of my life, Twitter has been my safe space. A place to laugh, cry, to find and share news, and to fangirl over my favourite celebrities throughout the years in equal measure. While alternatives exist, Meta’s Threads has largely been a disaster. The most promising contender, Bluesky, has a way to go. It currently lacks features like direct messaging, but, most importantly, still lacks a user base big enough to be a competitor for Twitter. Morally, it is time we did the right thing and made the transition. I feel a bit of a hypocrite writing this, still using a Twitter account, but I am writing this for me as much as I am for you – let’s all do better.
Let’s leave Elon behind.