In 2022, Twitter peaked at 368 million active users. It was the platform of choice for journalists, politicos and commentators across most disciplines, enabling users to curate their own news feeds and engage in informed debate, without significant interference from advertising or unwanted attention. Twitter was not, by some measure, the largest social media site, but was, by most measures, for that demographic, the most influential. A well-established “UK legal Twitter” had grown up.
Then in October 2022 Elon Musk took over Twitter, paying an eye-watering $44 billion.
He promptly fired 80% of Twitter staff, including critical content moderators.
To the bemusement of most, he renamed the service X.
He changed the system of verification of prominent users, allowing anyone to earn a “blue tick” by paying a subscription fee.
He changed the ranking algorithm, away from a mostly latest first, weighting according to his own whim.
He introduced ever more intrusive adverts as former big name advertisers deserted him, telling the departing advertisers “Go fuck yourself”.
Under the banner of “free speech absolutism”, he allowed back users previously banned for disseminating disinformation or hate speech, including Donald Trump, Andrew Tate, Tommy Robinson and Katie Hopkins.
With 2 million followers on his own account, he was already a significant presence, but he further adjusted the algorithm to boost his own tweets by a factor of (at one point) 1,000, using the site as his own personal ultra-megaphone.
The above negative changes and the increasing presence of trolls, bots, nutters and haters – generally anyone but those we had signed up to engage with – led to a rapid loss of subscribers and advertisers, and a consequential decline in value of the company of 71% by the beginning of 2024.
Previously an anti-Trumper, Musk switched allegiance during the US Presidential election campaign, becoming the biggest cheerleader for Trump. He used X to promote himself, Trump, MAGA and Republicanism generally, also freely posting or reposting disinformation and his pet conspiracy theories.
Meanwhile, for some time alternatives to X had been growing their user bases. These included Threads, a service from Meta, leveraging the Instagram user base; BlueSky, an open source platform developed by staff at Twitter and then hived off as a private “benefit corporation”; and Mastodon, an open source, self-hosted, social networking service. Whilst the former had the might of Meta behind it, BlueSky showed itself to be more aligned with what the pre-Musk Twitter user wanted.
The blatant misuse of X by Musk in the run-up to the election and Trump’s subsequent victory on November 5th proved to be the trigger for a mass migration from X to BlueSky and by the end of November BlueSky’s active user base had grown dramatically to over 23 million, still a tenth of X’s user base, but by most accounts with far better engagement.
Many, like renowned economist, Paul Krugman, feel that the Rubicon has been crossed:
“Growth has slowed basically because Bluesky has won — almost everyone who wanted real dialogue has made the migration. Others may stay in Muskland for a long time, because they aren’t looking for the same thing, although the site may enter a death spiral as it becomes ever more toxic. But for me it’s like old times, with serious discussion back without armies of trolls and bots jumping on everything you write. Many terrible things are happening, but this thing has gone right. And by the way, at least for a while this will be where I post serious economics.”
The lively “UK legal Twitter” has largely transferred to Bluesky. For new users, Sean Jones provides several UK Legal Bluesky Starter Packs which are invaluable in (re)finding others on the platform.
Nick Holmes is Editor of the Newsletter. Find me now on Bluesky at @nickholmes53.bsky.social and infolaw at @infolaw.bsky.social.
Image via Deviantart – CC BY-NC 3.0.
