Bart Cammaerts of the LSE explains why he thinks X users should leave the increasingly toxic social media platform.
Since Elon Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion in October 2022 and renamed it X, the social media platform has turned into a cesspool of hate, vitriol, and a safe haven for trolls and far-right fascist rhetoric. To underscore his point, Musk changed his bio to Chief Troll Officer (CTO). As I explain below, evidence is mounting that X is an increasingly toxic space. In the words of the UK’s media and communications regulator Ofcom, Musk is neither fit nor proper to lead such an important platform in the global media and communications ecosystem.
A month after taking over Twitter, Musk announced a “general amnesty” for a whole range of accounts that had previously been suspended by Twitter for hateful conduct or spreading misinformation about COVID and elections, as well as child sexual exploitation images. BBC monitoring found that nearly 20% of the restored accounts were accounts that advocated and propagated hate and violence. A year later, in November 2023, Musk decided to restore the accounts of English Defence League (EDL) leader Stephen Yaxley-Lennon aka Tommy Robinson and far-right agitator Katie Hopkins. The accounts of self-proclaimed misogynist Andrew Tate (who is currently the subject of police investigations for human trafficking and rape) and far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones were also restored.
In addition, Musk has gradually eliminated most of the moderation rules and the staff tasked with enforcing them. Furthermore, as Eli Pariser, co-director of the non-profit organization New Public, recently explained in the Financial Times, Musk has “removed and fired any infrastructure that would have provided a level of transparency about how Twitter makes decisions, what its community guidelines are and how they are enforced.” Pariser also argues that this increased lack of transparency has allowed Musk to make “more spontaneous impulsive decisions” without being held accountable. Musk also uses his algorithmic power to spread far-right discourse, conspiracy theories and election disinformation. Police, the British government, analysts and commentators have also agreed that the recent far-right racial unrest in the UK was fueled by X and by Musk personally.
While Musk presents himself as a “champion of absolute freedom of speech,” it is primarily his own freedom of speech and the freedom of speech of those who share his views that is protected (and algorithmically promoted). The same is not necessarily true for those he disagrees with, or those who criticize autocratic leaders in the developing world. Regarding the latter, X had no qualms about responding positively to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s calls to ban journalists and critics of his regime or to censor a BBC documentary about human rights abuses committed by Modi. Similarly, Musk also complied with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s calls to censor critics of his regime.
Additionally, in May 2024, users of X reported that using the terms cis or cisgender on the platform resulted in shadowbanning of posts and users (a practice in which platforms algorithmically reduce the visibility of content or users), and they received messages from X stating, “This post contains language that could be considered offensive by X and could be used in a harmful way in violation of our rules.” In recent months, Musk also briefly suspended the account of White guys for Harris during a successful fundraiser that raised more than $4 million for the Harris campaign, and reported that their account was subsequently flagged as spam by X, prompting the Washington Post to opine, “Sometimes it’s easy to forget that Twitter isn’t Twitter anymore. Until Elon Musk or his invisible hand comes along and reminds us.”
All of this raises the question of why so many governments, politicians, journalists and even academics are still active on X, feeding its algorithms and being an integral part of its business model (even though there are growing signs that advertisers are leaving and X is a loss-making business for Musk).
Full disclosure: I never had a Twitter account, nor an X account. But for those who do, isn’t it time to consider whether X is an area they want to be active in? For example, shouldn’t the UK government officially announce that it is leaving X, following the example of many Labour MPs who have decided to jump ship? There are plenty of alternatives (Threads, Blue Sky, Mastodon, to name a few). These aren’t without their problems either, but at least they have moderation policies that are enforced.
The main reason why this does not happen is the so-called the winner takes everything Effect that characterizes platform capitalism. People stay on X because the people they want to reach are also on X, and as Lewis Goodall of the popular podcast The news agents As I said in a recent discussion about leaving X (or not), it also means losing the following you’ve painstakingly built up over many years. The question X users should be asking themselves is: haven’t enough red lines been crossed already to delete accounts? in masses and thereby (further) reduce the impact and influence of X and Musk? I think we have reached that point.
This post represents the views of the author and not the position of the Media@LSE blog or the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Featured image: Photo by Julian Christ on Unsplash
