Good riddance to X

What did it for you? The Musk takeover? 240 characters. The ‘For You’ tab? The re-platforming of fascists? The ‘interview’ with Trump?

For me it was all of the above plus a more general disengagement with what used to be Twitter. Whatever the trigger, more and more people have had enough of X and a tipping point appears to have been reached this week. 

For a freelance journalist and news junkie like me, it’s been a wrench. I first joined in 2008 and Twitter became both a platform that amplified my work and a source of stories and insight. For a while there was a real sense of community and meeting people in person that you only knew from Twitter became a thing. 

All that was over a long time ago as the rancour and the pile-ons took over. As I noticed engagement slipping I became less inclined to tweet myself and more and more only used the app to keep up with the news. 

And what was the alternative? I couldn’t figure out Mastodon or Threads. Bluesky looked like the best option but it had too few people on it for real engagement and using it felt like speaking into a void. 

Not anymore. Refugees from X have been streaming over the border in the last week including many people that I know from the early days of Twitter. There are now enough people with an interest in housing to make up a community again. As things stand, there are more planners, lawyers, architects and academics than there are housing professionals but hopefully that will start to change. You can see my initial stab at what Bluesky calls a Starter Pack here.

After a decade in which it was integral to my work, it feels strange to be bidding farewell to Twitter but right to be saying good riddance to X. And more and more ordinary users agree. 

The question now is how long it will take the third and fourth estates to follow suit. Can MPs and politicos really share a space with Tommy Robinson and Andrew Tate?

Twitter became as essential to journalists as they were to it, almost always the quickest way to broadcast the news and drive traffic. 

But how can individual journalists and reputable media organisations continue to use a platform run by a man who seems determined to use it to broadcast his own views and showcase his own ignorance. 

It may be hard to leave thousands or even millions of followers behind but what are they waiting for?