It’s time for academics to let go of Twitter

Imagine discovering that a colleague was regularly posting on Gab, Parler or Truth Social. These alt-media platforms became notorious over recent years as spaces parallel to the mainstream of social media where the reactionary right has gathered. Defining themselves in opposition to the asserted liberal dominance of social platforms, where censorious moderators are accused of reinforcing the prejudices of woke mobs, they have become key forums in which reactionary sentiment has germinated. While Truth Social has struggled to achieve mainstream success, with less than a million monthly active users, it has still been valued in the billions due to its close association with Donald Trump. The continued vitality of these platforms, despite their relatively small user bases, demonstrates the ongoing demand for spaces built around right-wing identity politics.

It would likely be a surprise if you discovered a colleague was a regular user of these platforms. Even if they held strident conservative views, the widespread image of these platforms as unregulated forums in which hate speech thrives would likely pose questions about the judgement of the colleague and the nature of their views. It wouldn’t be a matter of surprise at their right-wing views, as much as their engagement with a space in which problematic and unpleasant behaviour has tended to thrive.

Now imagine that this colleague saw themselves as holding progressive views, even defining themselves as virulently in opposite to the belief systems around which these platforms have germinated. In this case, surprise would likely give way to bewilderment. Why would they choose to spend their time on this platform? Why would they expose themselves to the hostility and harassment likely to be provoked by their opinions in that environment? Surely there are other ways they could engage online? I suspect it would leave most of us with many questions if we discovered that our liberal or left wing colleague was a regular poster on Truth Social.

Yet there are many academics who are still regularly posting on Elon Musk’s Twitter (now X) in spite of the transformation of the platform which he has overseen since taking it over in October 2022. I would suggest that on any objective metric Musk has turned Twitter into a platform which mimics the characteristics of the alt-media sites I considered above. Since taking over the platform, Musk has systematically dismantled content moderation teams, reinstated previously banned accounts, and altered the verification system in ways that have led to a documented surge in hate speech and misinformation

The process reached its apotheosis during the American election we’ve just witness where Musk came out emphatically for Trump, not just as a financial backer (contributing over $100 million to Trump-aligned SuperPACs) but also the most prominent campaign surrogate in the later stages, repeatedly appearing on stage with the Republican candidate. During this period he was tweeting as many as hundreds of times per day and using his control over the platform’s algorithm to ensure his pro-Trump content reached massive audiences. This transformation of Twitter into what is effectively a personal promotional platform for Musk and his political allies represents the final stage in its evolution from a neutral communications infrastructure into an ideologically-driven alt-media site. The platform’s previous role as a crucial space for academic discourse and public engagement has been fundamentally compromised by this shift.

I wrote a number of pieces for this blog early in Musk’s takeover, exploring what it means for academics when the ‘free trial period’ of social media has been declared over. The argument I made at that point was that the platform was likely to produce declining returns because, in its newly enshittified state, visibility was something which users would increasingly have to pay for. However in recent months we’ve seen the next stage of the evolution which reveals Musk’s intentions in purchasing the site. We might say that Twitter has reached its final form as a right-wing echo chamber, with its $44 billion purchase price essentially funding its transformation into Truth Social Premium.

I understand this impulse to wait and see. I stopped posting on Twitter nearly a year before I finally worked up the commitment to delete my account. The newfound distance I experienced while logging in ever less frequently made it easier to see how the platform had changed than when I was embedded within it daily. It’s like the proverbial frog in slowly boiling water – the gradual nature of Twitter’s transformation made it harder to recognise how profound the changes were while remaining actively engaged with the platform. This isn’t just a matter of the makeup of the platform changing, it’s the infrastructure itself being developed in intentionally reactionary ways which squeeze out the visibility and influence of non-reactionary voices on the platform. It’s likely your engagement has been dropping precipitously, particularly if you’re unwilling to pay Musk’s monthly fee, with follower counts increasingly misleading when many have largely or entirely disengaged without actually deleting their account.

There are alternatives even if there might not be one alternative which is a direct replacement for a platform so many of us have spent a decade or more habitually relying upon. If we remain reluctant to explore and embrace those alternatives, we create a situation in which remaining on Twitter takes on the air of inevitability. The decentralised nature of platforms like Mastodon might initially seem daunting, but it offers opportunities for building more focused and meaningful academic communities. Platforms like Bluesky are experimenting with new models of content moderation. Even LinkedIn, despite its corporate character, has become an increasingly viable space for academic discourse. It’s likely you’re going to have to switch to one of these platforms eventually, so why not put time and energy into helping build community there rather than clinging onto a Twitter which is an increasingly unpleasant and off putting place to spend your time?

It’s possible that Elon Musk might succeed in placing the platform on a firmer financial footing by folding it into his AI startup, xAI, which recently secured a $24 billion valuation. But this would only accelerate Twitter’s transformation into a testing ground for Musk’s technological and political projects, turning the TruthSocial premium he has created into a feeding group for training GrokAI, his ChatGPT competitor, which in turn is being used to fuel the misinformation and propaganda which dominates the platform. While Meta might ultimately be heading in a similar direction, Twitter/xAI has the potential to develop into the first instance of an integrated GenAI social platform, orchestrated by the most senior billionaire in Donald Trump’s court to serve his political and economic interests.

Platforms don’t necessarily die. They can persist in diminished forms, like MySpace, or find a smaller second life under different ownership, like Tumblr. But their cultural significance and utility can fade to the point where continuing to invest time and energy in them becomes increasingly difficult to justify. Twitter appears to have reached this point for academics. If you’re an academic who is still using Twitter, I would gently suggest to you that it is time to let go. The platform will either fold, fade into irrelevance in a Myspace-esque fashion, or complete its evolution into the central engine of reactionary politics, that compromises your professional credibility through association. The sooner we collectively acknowledge this reality, the sooner we can begin building better alternatives for academic engagement online.

#elections #Gab #misinformation #Musk #Parler #trump #TruthSocial #twitter