Wednesday, August 14, 2024
Quitting X
The paper says that over the weekend, newly elected MPs took to WhatsApp groups to raise growing concerns about the role X played in the spread of misinformation amid the far-right-led riots in parts of England and Northern Ireland:
Two Labour MPs are known to have told colleagues they were leaving the platform. One of them, Noah Law, has disabled his account. Other MPs who still use X have begun examining alternatives, including Threads, which is owned by Facebook’s parent company, Meta, and the open-source platform Bluesky.
Musk, who bought Twitter in 2022 and renamed it X, has been embroiled in a public spat with Keir Starmer since the tech billionaire suggested that the riots meant “civil war is inevitable” in the UK. Musk has been criticised for failing to crack down on misinformation on the platform and for sharing fake news himself.
In an article for the Guardian on Monday, a former Twitter executive, Bruce Daisley, said Musk should face personal sanctions and even an arrest warrant if he continues to stir up public disorder online.
Over the weekend, Jess Phillips, a Home Office minister who has more than 700,000 followers on X, said she wanted to scale back her use of the platform as it had become a “bit despotic” and was “a place of misery now”.
A government minister also told the Guardian they had reduced their posts on X over the summer and that Musk’s actions had made them “very reluctant to return”.
Musk – who has cast himself as a proponent of free speech, reinstating to X figures including Donald Trump and the far-right activist Tommy Robinson – is due to conduct an interview with Trump on X on Monday night .
Josh Simons, the Labour MP for Makerfield, said he was looking into alternative platforms such as Bluesky. “What matters about Musk is not only what he said, but how he changed X’s algorithms,” he said. “He’s turned X into a megaphone for foreign adversaries and far-right fringe groups seeking to corrupt our public sphere. Nobody should have that power.
“A new generation of legislators are flexing their muscles, people who’ve grown up understanding the power of these platforms. By talking down Britain, Musk has placed X firmly in our sights.”
Pesonally I am still persevering with twitter, but I am keeping it under review and using the block button liberally. This exodus by MPs may well catch on.
Comments:
<< Home
I gave up twitter in 2017 following the GE, because I found it a place full of hate and vitriol and full of lies about the LibDems. I have better things to do than be constantly upset by a social media platform. Since Musk took over, most people seem to think it has got worse. I encourage LibDems to quit this platform and hasten the end of X by making it financially unviable.
Post a Comment
<< Home
