In the Dark

I noticed this morning that the Guardian has decided no longer to post on X, the far-right propaganda outlet formerly known as Twitter. Since Elon Musk’s takeover the site has become increasingly toxic; see this post from months ago.

As I have explained before, I left Twitter/X at the end of August 2023 and haven’t looked back. The above image is appearing more and more frequently around the world of social media. Many of my friends and colleagues have quit too, most of them setting up accounts on Bluesky and/or Mastodon. I have noticed a particularly significant influx of new followers on Bluesky. I don’t have as many followers there as I did on Twitter, but the quantity and quality of engagement is higher.

It’s not just the systematic amplification of hateful tweets from a variety of antisocial bigots, nor the reinstatement of noxious individuals previously banned for such conduct, nor the deluge of porn bots and other automated gibberish nor the scrapping of virtually all forms of moderation. It’s also that Elon Musk himself has used his own site to endorse explicitly anti-semitic conspiracy theories. Everyone who puts anything on Twitter nowadays is providing revenue that feeds this maelstrom of hate. How a decent individual can in good conscience remain on that site is beyond me.

But that’s not the point of this post. Virtually every public institution I know – including universities – continues to maintain a presence on Twitter/X for self-promotion despite that platforms deliberate and sustained violation of what purport to be their institutional values. Only a small number of institutions have acted according to their own ethics by quitting Musk’s platform, including the University of Luxembourg. Those still on, including my employer, are, in my opinion, displaying gross hypocrisy.

Why are so many universities still supporting Twitter/X? I suppose it may be because many of them have specifically employed staff to broadcast news about themselves on this platform and without it they’d have nothing to do. That’s not a very good argument, in my opinion. I’m sure other bullshit jobs can be found. Another possibility, of course, is that they just don’t care. Given the prevalence of toxic management in higher education these days, this may well be the real reason. Whatever the reason I find it deeply shaming to be working for an institution that is still happy to tout for trade in a neo-Nazi chatroom.

Any institution worried that there is no viable alternative to Twitter/X should consider setting up on the Fediverse. Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, for example, already has its own Mastodon instance. The advantage of the Fediverse is that the owners of each server can apply their own policies. I’d like to see a future in which all universities, national agencies, and other public research institutions, set up their own Mastodon instances instead. That would create a very exciting environment for the exchange of news and information which would be a more than adequate replacement for academic Twitter/X.