The beginning of the end for Twitter/X/Whatever...?

Leftists leaving X. No one else. Because X is a free speech platform. And it is the media now.

In fairness the right, led by Trump, were the first to flounce. Now the left are getting their flounce in.

I never liked Twitter, left or right, as the loudest voices on social media tend to be the most shrill, offering the most extreme opinion in starkly black and white terms. Whereas if you are actually interested in finding solutions, it tends to involve lots of boring details, expert opinions, statistics and very many shades of grey.

With free speech I agree with the right to express opinions. One of the big problems with social media is people making factually incorrect statements. The old style media got a bad rap but whether you read the Telegraph or the Guardian you would find both newspapers worked incredibly hard to get the facts right. They would for sure interpret those facts differently in opinion columns but the news pages were fairly "straight". The problem now is that a whole generation is growing up not knowing there is a difference between fact and opinion. And that is dangerous...

I was very pleased to see the Guardian throw a paddy and leave X this week. Anyone else who is opposed to free speech should frankly do likewise. They won't be missed.

Refusing to listening to someone isn't curtaining their free speech. Blocking isn't a ban. And bans are rare on X. We aren't dependent any more on corporate left liberal gatekeepers, which benefits everyone.

He's attempted to address that problem on X with the 'Community Notes' function; with some success so far, but still early days. At least the intention is there and the recognition of the issue

What specific examples have we got about Musk banning people or limiting free speech from certain parties?

I think he gets roundly talked down as some sort of nutjob or loose cannon by the legacy media, probably cos they see him as a threat. As far as I can tell, X is promoting free speech across the board and with no bias.

The best disinfectant to bad ideas/actors is sunlight; and better ideas/actors. 

And if someone is deliberately trolling or being abusive, then they can be banned, sure, because they're not helping anyone and just dragging the whole place down. But not if they are a person's genuinely held beliefs, however misguided they may be.

I wish that were the case. However, there have been loads of academic studies showing, for example, that in the social media age conspiracy theories and extremist opinions (of whatever shade) have exploded. Off the scale. During covid vast numbers of people were saying, with apparent sincerity, that Bill Gates had deliberately started/ spread the disease. JD Vance came very close to admitting he made up the whole "they are eating the dogs" story. But it served his purpose anyway. Social media didn't shine much "light" of truth on that, it simply spread a message without evidence to millions of gullible people. People have access to far more information and opinion now, for sure, and for sane, sensible people like you that is clearly a good thing. I am sure you do seek differing opinions and evaluate them. But that is not how a lot of people operate, on both sides. One thing that came out loud and clear from the US election is that you have one tribe getting their information from one set of sources and the other tribe getting theirs from another. And its leading to far more division. Musk can post a fake headline that Starmer was about to send rioters to specially made camps in the Falklands. That was completely made up. He belatedly deleted it, but not before 2m people had read it. 

Social media is certainly creating a lot of heat. Light? Am not so sure.

Sorry, crossed wires. My reply above was in reference to RFI not X 😅

Quite possibly. But I’d say main reasons he won were 1) he spoke about policies more ie he had some and 2) Harris kept bringing out celebs to tell all the “stupid” people how they should vote. I don’t like either of them.

With you on that. I’m no leftie and no way support Trump but I was in US for a week recently and she was awful. No substance, just a manic laugh with a bit of cheerleading. 330m people and they were the best they could do? Ordinary yanks are tearing their hair out at what’s happening to their country. We only see both extremes. I had no one to vote for here, my friends over there feel the same.

ironically the right has also become a bit of a fanatical mess in recent years too with the rise of trumpism and the like. people are going to the extremes in both senses of it and cancel culture is rife on both sides imo.

personally always seen myself as very liberal regardless of political views but i have become more left leaning the older i become after becoming disillusioned with the tory party and the right since brexit. was always more right leaning prior to that.

end of the day though the powers that be want us to be angry at eachother rather than questioning them. everyone's a strawman, i'm a woke libtard, rights are racist and selfish etc.

Good luck to anyone going to pastures new... but please go quietly...

The dramatic exits are cringe worthy as they continue to post on X to say how good the sky is over there 🙈


An Edinburgh news outlet with 63K followers has said they will make @bluesky their main news outlet when they reach 500 followers... 🤣

They however will keep an account going on X as the breaking news breaks on X

Another social media account with bans again...

Like my attitude on pronouns "No Thank You"

I think you have to be very careful what you read into our last election result. People I know who voted Reform haven’t got a clue what they voted for except they weren’t the Tories or Labour and might send the boats back to France. Votes for the LibDems also got Labour in. The whole thing was a shambles given we had/have the worst set of options in my memory.