The Flounce

People are leaving TwitterX, and I find the behaviour fascinating

…In part, because I’ve previously done it myself.

When Twitter used to ban or censor right-of-centre commentators and sex-realist feminists, I did what a lot of lefties are currently doing. That is, I set up social media boltholes on other platforms in the hope that Twitter would either find its brain or sink under the weight of its own partisanship.

For a while there, I had accounts on Parler, Gab, and Gettr. Amazon Web Services killed Parler off, Gab went weird and goddy, while Gettr never really established itself. The Twitter alternative I liked most, Minds, simply failed to catch on, I suspect because it resembled Facebook rather than Twitter. People wanted a Twitter clone.

That said, it’s entirely possible that a big part of those platforms not working out for me is down to me—and my general technical ineptitude. I have an Instagram account—or, rather, my cat has one. There’s a new Chilli pic on there about twice a year. I’m still on Facebook but I use it for its original purpose: to stay in touch with friends from high school, university, and former employers. My LinkedIn account now I’m no longer working full-time is, shall we say, not active.

I really should put this on Instagram…

When a lefty friend offered me a Bluesky invitation (it used to be invitation only) earlier this year, I declined on the basis that I’m actually not very good at social media and would probably waste both his time and his invitation. If Twitter does eventually fall over (I’m sure it will, nothing lasts forever), I suspect I won’t go elsewhere for any social media. That race is run. It was interesting and it upended our politics in all sorts of ways, but the novelty has well and truly worn off. In that sense, this observation from

Oliver Johnson

rings true for me:

Like I say, I’m not planning to move. I don’t honestly have the time or the inclination to try to create yet another social media profile. I’m happy writing stuff on Substack, my subscriber numbers and engagement are fine. I put more serious work things on LinkedIn. But if you do go over to The Other Place, do pop back and say hi occasionally.

While I wish the Bluesky asylum seekers the best of luck, I do think they bear some responsibility for their current situation (and for Twitter’s current malaise).

Cartoon by Moose Allain

Many of the Tories and feminists who “left” Twitter for various alternatives didn’t have any choice in the matter. They were simply banned, their accounts deleted. They had every right to go elsewhere. When the left ran Twitter it ran it as a censorious horrorshow that somehow managed to combine speech-policing with rank ineptitude, as

Ed West

points out:

Remember when the site was used by a model to tell a 16-year-old to kill themselves? Or when a reality TV star was driven to suicide by online bullying?  Or how an unknown woman became the most hated person on earth because of one silly tweet?

[…]

[A]nyone who expressed non-progressive views on old Twitter will have their own story to tell: one of the bizarre things about the moral panic which followed the European Championship final in 2021 was the report that Marcus Rashford received 500 abusive messages on Twitter, which as many journalists will tell you, is hardly unusual. Racist abuse may be quantitatively worse, at least to the social fabric, but under the old system of ‘moderation’ even veiled or unveiled threats of violence would be treated with absurd leniency. The site was characterised by anarcho-tyranny, where one might be banned for stating biological facts but not for overtly fantasising about physically harming someone; rule-enforcement could not be agreed on, because people didn’t trust the authorities to act in a fair and impartial manner towards the tribe excluded from power.

In saying this, I realise, too, that when unbanned Tories and feminists flounced off Twitter under the old dispensation, we also looked pretty sad. My only excuse for the behaviour was that bans were so arbitrary, one never knew how long one’s account was for this world.

I’m going to take a pop at a sub-group of flouncers, though, the ones moaning about being called hurty words. This includes a number of individuals who genuinely seem to think it’s their role in life to go looking for nasty bigoted shite, then report it to Twitter’s overlords (and now Bluesky’s overlords as well, if things like the below are anything to go by).

“Bluesky is going to give us hours of amusement as a platform full of wannabe school prefects all report each other” seems a fair assessment.

And yes, I have to engage in a little ritual genuflection here, because I have genuinely been called a large number of nasty names in my life. And despite that, dibber-dobbers still give me hives.

If I had a quid for every use of “dyke” (and related) sent my way, I would be matching millions with sundry oil sheiks, and that’s before we get to the ire directed at any columnist with whom ordinary members of the public disagree. I am old enough to have received thousands of abusive letters (about both novels and columns), some of them written in green ink. People are allowed to dislike me and my kind, or to argue that I’ve written a load of cobblers. They’re also allowed to dislike you and your kind. It would be astonishingly easy for me to wander over to Arabic Twitter and report lots of sincere Muslims for saying bigoted things about homosexuals. I don’t engage in this behaviour because I don’t expect the world to be my friend.

Relatedly (and this is directed at ethnic minorities as well as fellow gayers), a lot of folks from “historically disadvantaged groups” have become dab hands at dishing it out over the last twenty or so years. A necessary corollary of this behaviour is “learn to take it.” Yes, that means you. People are not going to stop saying hurty words to each other. People are also going to judge you based on the behaviour of your worst activists and vote accordingly (see recent US election results).

What of the core claims being made? Is Twitter genuinely worse now, a victim of what goes by the name “social media enshittification”?

Well, yes and no. I know many people dislike what Musk has done to Twitter, but when he made “likes” private, he stopped his site being used as a vector for HR vindictiveness (something about which HR mavens have complained, by the way, at least privately). It’s also now substantially more difficult to generate a pile-on using a quote-tweet, as well as possible to read tweets (but without interaction) from people who are hot on the block button.

The latter change has allowed me to establish why Baroness Nicholson had me blocked. I’d always wondered, because she’s had me blocked for as long as I can remember, yet like me, she can legitimately be described as “sex realist” or “gender-critical”. Musk’s change meant I was able for the first time to see an entire thread underneath one of her tweets, so learned that she blocks anyone—friend and foe alike—for swearing. Women who know her socially and get on with her well “IRL” have been blocked for saying “bugger” and “shite” on Twitter.

Well, glad that’s cleared up. Good to know.

The worst change Musk has made involves deboosting external links. This first emerged in April last year, in response to Substack releasing Notes (which Musk considered so derivative of Twitter’s code as to be a “clone”). At first only direct links to Substack were affected. If you had your own domain—as I do—you were fine. However, external link deboosting is now being applied uniformly. Everyone from a local tradesman selling new driveways and conservatories to the BBC and the Spectator now has to make use of some tedious version of “link in following tweet” or “link in bio”.

If Musk doesn’t fix this, he will legitimately lose the journalists and commentators currently on the site. Those people came, originally, to share stuff from their mastheads, and this applies regardless of politics. I first gained a following thanks to professional experience—yes, it was once fine for commercial solicitors to natter on the socials about the Enterprise Investment Scheme and how it related to start-ups and spin-outs etc—and later through Speccie columns along with a couple of books. A tweet from Tim Harford praising my second novel (with a link, bless him) went “viral” and led to thousands of sales. Pieces for the magazine proved popular. Just as I enjoyed Twitter for other people’s links, other people paid me the same courtesy.

Musk’s external link deboosting thus makes the Guardian departure from Twitter less of a flounce and more of a straightforward commercial decision. Based on the figures below (via Sunder Katwala on Twitter; the red arrows highlighting differing engagement are also his), the New York Times may follow its ideological stablemate over to Bluesky. The technical aspects of this argument, mainly focussing on ease-of-use, are made best here, by an

Edrith

(I have not encountered him previously).

If—for want of a better phrase—“political twitter” fragments into right and left ideological silos, it won’t be the end of the world. Echo-chambers are one thing, but so is forced association. Social media facilitates both. James Marriott’s observation that, “on X, Guardian types are forced daily to reckon with the looniest right-wingers and Telegraph readers with the nuttiest lefties. Neither side has been made much calmer by the experience” is a fair one.

Mind you, I think online echo-chambers are more serious than forced ideological association, and this passage from

Oliver Johnson

captures why:

After the 2016 Brexit Referendum, many former Remainers formed themselves into a tight-knit online community called FBPE. Within that bubble, it maybe seemed completely logical and coherent to be arguing for a second referendum, but from the outside, the whole world of following Femi, of stanning EU Supergirl, of berets with stars on, seemed kind of crazy. And people inside the bubble only interacting with people who agreed with them, and hence not understanding they were a small minority, led to the overconfidence of the Second Referendum movement in daring Boris to hold the 2019 election. Tell me how that worked out?

So I honestly think a Bluesky community only talking to itself, reassuring themselves constantly that they are the better people and ignoring normies, is the best road to President Vance winning in 2028.

I covered Brexit for two foreign publications (one Australian, one American). I was present when the FBPE/People’s Vote movement first emerged and at one point had to interview some of its supporters (this just as it was becoming visibly madder). I have had Beethoven blasted at me (followed by the Benny Hill theme) courtesy the Stop Brexit Man. These people have absolutely no idea how they look, something they couple with no desire to find out.

Maybe if an Australian movement of equivalent nuttiness emerged I wouldn’t see the madness for what it is. One often sees things from one’s own country less well. But to an outsider, reporting on an unfolding political crisis, the UK’s anti-Brexit forces were progressively consumed by insanity, and it was toe-curling to watch.

Finally, be aware that Jack Dorsey—founder of both Twitter and Bluesky—no longer has an interest in the latter and even deleted his own account there. It’s fair to say he was not a happy camper as he walked out the door, either, accusing Bluesky of “literally repeating all the mistakes we made at Twitter”.