Elon Musk scrambled X - and politics

The first time I really worried about Twitter disappearing was in 2016. Nothing had really happened; everything still seemed fine. It was early spring, and neither Brexit nor Trump felt like realistic prospects back then. Whatever Elon Musk was doing at the time was also irrelevant; I sincerely couldn’t tell you what he was up to.

Still, an acquaintance had found herself with some enthusiastic investors, and was in need of an idea. What sort of tech thing should she launch? She asked me and I told her, at length, about the need for a Twitter back-up. It wasn’t at risk yet, I said, but one day it would be, because social media platforms rarely last forever.

I could see that Twitter had become a core part of both Westminster and Fleet Street, and was concerned about what would happen to both of these worlds – both of my worlds – without it. In the end, she went for a different idea, and I can’t say I blame her. She and her deep-pocketed friends would have had to wait a whole six years before getting some bang for their buck.

It is now 2023 and Twitter has been dying for some months – quietly in some ways, and incredibly loudly and annoyingly in others. Politics and journalism remain exceptions, at least for now. The bubbles they inhabit on the app still feel largely untouched, but for how much longer? It feels quite bittersweet; I was clearly right to be worried all those years ago, but it isn’t exactly bringing me any comfort now.

This is why I felt conflicted reading Anne Hidalgo’s last ever post on the artist currently known as X. “Twitter, far from being the groundbreaking medium that initially made information accessible to the greatest possible number of people, has in recent years become an impressive tool for destroying our democracies,” the Paris mayor wrote.

“This medium has become a gigantic global sewer, and we should continue to wade into it? […] I refuse to endorse this evil scheme.”

Of course (and with no offence to the capital of my home country), it would be easy to say that Hidalgo’s move is but a drop in the ocean, and will be broadly ignored. Come back to me when presidents and prime ministers start leaving Twitter, yadda yadda.

It wouldn’t be an entirely unfair stance, but would still miss part of the picture. The mayor wasn’t the final straw that broke the camel’s back, but she was the first, and sometimes those matter just as much.

Hidalgo may not be a household name for the crushing majority of even well-informed punters outside France, but she is a senior politician and she has decided to leave Twitter. She has also explicitly laid the blame on the platform, and laid out just how toxic it has become.

Other politicians, across the Channel and elsewhere, may not follow her immediately, but the tide has begun turning. I am not a betting woman but would otherwise put some decent money on her no longer being the only senior political figure having quit Twitter in about six months’ time. There will be another one, then another one, then eventually the dam will burst.

It is hard to overstate the extent to which it will change the political sphere, especially in Britain and the US. So much has happened on, around, thanks to or because of Twitter in the past decade.

I have, on a number of occasions, asked denizens of Westminster how they felt about the platform, and they struggled to answer because it had become so enmeshed in their daily lives. It was like asking a group of rabbits how they felt about hay.

I was worried in 2016 because I am an anxious person by nature, and I am worried now because things are so obviously about to change. I’ve never known politics, journalism or political journalism in a world without Twitter, and I am far from alone in that.

What will happen next? I honestly have no idea, and that’s not exactly reassuring, given the way most things have gone over the past few years. What I am pretty sure of, however, is that this moment will be remembered as a turning point. Really, it’s the beginning of the end.