A farewell to the platform once known as Twitter
The joke used to be that Twitter was always a cesspit, but that it was our cesspit. Now it is Elon Musk's cesspit and it is time for us to rebuild our communities elsewhere.
History will view Twitter’s death as another version of the same story that has afflicted most failed social media platforms - a downfall that was almost entirely self-inflicted and caused by a failure of vision by its leadership.
Twitter will take its place in a social media graveyard next to platforms like MySpace, which died from a failure to innovate, causing it to haemorrhage users to competitors like Facebook (and Twitter). Twitter will also join Google+, which died because it sucked.
I write this post as a farewell to Twitter, and specifically Twitter. A farewell to the platform that once was, and not the platform that it has since become. Much like how the persona of Anakin Skywalker ceased to exist once he became Darth Vader - I do not think of X as the ‘Twitter’ that I knew and generally enjoyed. I also write this farewell as a way to hold myself accountable - I need to say goodbye. We all need to say goodbye.
As a platform, Twitter was designed to provide a lot of direct interaction between users - for good and for bad. Twitter facilitated interactions between people who would not normally interact in the ‘real world’. It allowed information to be shared rapidly and, at its best, actively facilitated the holding of power - governments, politicians, police, et al. - to account.
On balance, I benefitted from Twitter. Twitter had been an amazing conduit for connecting with people, and for sourcing and sharing information quickly. It was a place that fostered journalism, and I particularly experienced its benefits during my time as a journalist writing for RenewEconomy.
It was via Twitter that - as a journalist who did not work within the federal press gallery - I was able to exchange direct messages with federal parliamentarians, including a former prime minister. It was through Twitter that I was once asked to appear on ABC News with literally just five minutes’ notice to provide commentary on the Coalition’s infamous modelling of its net zero emissions plan.
I had a verified account (before verification was something you paid for). I got job offers through Twitter. I made real-world friends through Twitter. I even once secured a date through Twitter.
With more than 10,000 followers, Twitter provided an audience that helped to foster and encourage my own propensity to seek out and share information that others often didn’t want known.
One of the most enduring examples is probably this tweet with a clip from a senate estimates hearing in 2020, of Queensland LNP senator Gerard Rennick quizzing the head of the CSIRO about whether the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle disproves climate change (it does not). To this day, people still find and reshare the clip, which has now been watched almost 200,000 times.
Twitter was also a source of some very funny moments that often took on a ‘bird loose in the classroom’ type energy that derailed productivity on many workdays while we were collectively distracted. Such as when baboons got loose in Sydney’s Inner West, with one of them on their way to get a vasectomy, just as the world was on the precipice of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The problems with Twitter have, however, been long evident and persisted long before its purchase by Elon Musk. As someone who predominantly writes about climate change and politics, I also received regular floods of abuse and hate through the platform, including physical threats.
I said that I benefitted from Twitter - but I say that as someone who is white and a man.
I saw the targeting and abuse that spread on the platform replicated on a much higher level against others, especially against women and people of colour. The platform has long allowed largely unfettered racism and was notoriously poor at cracking down on the racist slurs used against Indigenous Australians.
Musk’s vision for X is one where such activity is even further unrestrained on the platform. The commodification of the verification system, the removal of the ‘block’ function, and Musk using X as a platform for self-promotion and self-gratification have fostered and amplified the worst parts of what was Twitter, while undermining its best parts.
It is clear that what Musk is doing to X isn’t motivated by a genuine desire for ‘freedom of speech’ or ensuring it serves as the ‘de facto public town square’ - Musk has used the platform for his own partisan desires to help elect Donald Trump, to serve his own business interests and to provide a megaphone for alt-right conspiracies and harassment.
Musk has largely succeeded in that quest, and as the world braces for a new four-year presidential term under Donald Trump, it is now imperative that we actively rebuild the spaces that will allow us to resist and repel the threats to democracy, health, safety, the rights of women, migrants etc. that will emerge within the United States and will likely spread to its peer nations like Australia.
Crucially, this includes the climate crisis - which, even before Trump’s return as president, remains a dangerously unmitigated and growing threat to humanity.
The time to say farewell to Twitter has come. Many, to their credit, reached that conclusion a long time ago and started rebuilding communities in places like Bluesky. But the re-election of Trump, with Musk’s backing, has underscored the need to accelerate the exodus from X.
Much of ‘climate Twitter’ has already shifted over to Bluesky, which has the vibe of early Twitter without the inane trolling and the owner’s expression of openly fascist views that have plagued X.
Time will tell whether the fresh, friendlier vibe that Bluesky offers will last. Trolls and bad-faith actors may still come to take up the space they occupied on Twitter. But there does appear to be much less appetite - from users and the owners of Bluesky alike - to allow the platform to fester into a place where abuse is rife.
For those who have recently made the switch, or have yet to do so, Bluesky allows the creation of ‘starter packs’ that make it much easier to bulk follow a list of accounts collated based on a theme that may be interesting to you. It is an ingenuous feature that dramatically reduces the fear that switching to Bluesky will mean starting again from scratch, and smooths the transition between platforms.
For those interested in climate, I would recommend the following starter packs:
The list of climate journalists and editors collated by Amy Westervelt
Any of the multiple starter packs created by climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe
Jack Ryan’s starter pack of Australian science journalists
Ketan Joshi has also amassed a huge list of climate and energy people on Bluesky in the GreenSky list
Tim Baxter also created a feed of Australian-specific climate and energy people
Many good writers are also active here on Substack, which (despite its own flaws) is also a good platform to source credible information about climate change. Some I would recommend:
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You can also find me on Bluesky.