I was a big Twitter user - I found it a great way to engage with news and views, it made me laugh, it gave me access to viewpoints not well-represented in other places. Would we have had #MeToo without Twitter? I doubt it - the gatekeepers of traditional media would never have found space for that free sharing of sexual harassment experience. It has also been important for supporters of Scottish independence - MSM with a few exceptions is strictly Unionist - Twitter gave us the chance to challenge that narrative.
But now it is recast as ‘Elon Musk’s X’ - I find myself put off by the grainy mark on my phone screen that has replaced the little blue bird icon. It looks like the insignia of a cult, or membership of a seedy adult film club or something. It is horrible, I hate it.
When I look at that grim X what it says to me is - this is one of the three most important social media sites in the world. It is a virtual country - but citizens have no say in this online Athens. This is the plaything of the very, very rich man who now owns it. What he says goes. What you write here, he owns. The X is a big I AM, Elon Musk raising a finger to the ordinary mortals who helped build his platform.
Where is government in this? Should we - in a democracy - be so reliant on the moral judgment - or lack of it - of one individual? Can I continue to use this site? What are the alternatives?
On the site you are on now, Substack, I at least get a note of the email addresses of people who subscribe to my Letter from Scotland - so if Musk were to buy this site and change the logo to a bleeding red hand or a finger stuck up his own hairy nostril, I could leave and use email to contact you and tell you where to find me. The Substack app can be a source of good content - although a lot of it is paywalled. But it is no substitute for the stream of news and views I could find on Twitter.
X is still limping on - from my own feed today, the Times of London shared a headline proclaiming that the Scottish government spent money on airport business lounge fees - which they referred to as “VIP treatment” - for Nicola Sturgeon. This met with a sceptical response. Should, instead of working on government business, our First Minister have gone to Wetherspoons with the holiday crowd for an all-day breakfast and a pint of heavy, like Rishi Sunak does? On Twitter, the response gets the same chance as the newspaper’s shout-out. My tweet got 60,000 views and 1,500 likes and shares. The Times post got 23,000 views and 300 likes and shares.
Another area of controversy in the news media has been endless negative headlines about ferries. But it turns out Scotland’s ferry service compares favourably in terms of cost, reliability and even the age of the fleet against comparables services. Ireland uses seven 50-year-old ex-Calmac ferries, for example. Ernst and Young did a comparison last year showing Scotland’s ferries are actually near the top of the table in terms of performance. None of this information is reported in MSM. I got it via “Talking Up Scotland” on Twitter, where Professor John Robertson provides counterbalancing research to media stories that he views as politically motivated.
Many have complained about the argy-bargy you got on Twitter - but there is an upside. It is good to be challenged on a point of view as it makes you think harder. Some people do find it difficult to express themselves civilly or to stick to the point at issue. I developed a method of trying to nudge them back to it - ‘So you are saying that…?’ - which sometimes worked. I had many useful engagements, with people from different backgrounds and levels of education, some of which made me aware of my own areas of ignorance, mistakes, or logical weaknesses. It is actually quite hard to find places where you can have a lively dispute with people of opposing views in the modern world - but how can you form a strong argument without that?
Moving to other platforms like Threads is no solution - it is just another super-rich fratboy’s plaything and one where the algorithm favours soupy posts of the “Christopher Robin has ten little toes” type.
Facebook is no longer a place where you connect with friends. Now instead, I get a torrent of low-rent pitches for front-fastening bras and stackable boxes for tidying your closet - five ads per one friend’s post. It reminds me of those handy throw-away pullouts you used to get in the Sunday papers, full of ads for galoshes and things for getting guacamole out of the blender.
I also got put off using Facebook/ Instagram by the Molly Russell inquiry and to US Congress, which brought out into the open clear evidence these platforms are hurting young people, that executives knew it for years and suppressed that information.
We are creatures of habit and although I didn’t like the way Musk was treating Twitter employees I probably would have carried on using it as I did before - regarding it as the best of a bad lot. But the new logo is a disruptor. It actively prevents me from using the site - my finger hovers and moves on. I am not the only one who feels that way. Is it possible Musk is trying to deliberately kill the platform as some kind of tax write off? Who knows.
Perhaps we have just reached peak social media, sooner than everyone thought. The bright blue bird of the future, representing the ideal of a mass conversation where everyone was equal, has flown away.
Not only does Mastadon not have the width or content, when you push back on almost any thread, however courteously, you get flouncing and accusations of harshness. If there’s anything with content at all it gets hidden behind a trigger warning.