Yes, you should leave Twitter

Photo by Ravi Sharma

I read the other day on X, the social media hub formerly known as Twitter, that the argument against individualism on the left has gone too far. I can’t remember who said it or what the exact context was, but she was arguing that while there is no ethical consumption under capitalism, as the cliché goes, some types of consumption are more ethical than others.

In the animal rights movement, I really appreciate the shift away from individualism that has occurred in recent years and is still ongoing. Instead of focusing on changing individual behavior, namely getting others to become vegan, activists seem to focus more on enacting pro-animal public policies. For example, I have called on legislators to support more government funding for cultured meat research.

However, I sympathize with what this commenter said. Ironically, I especially feel this way when I think about the left’s involvement in X. I don’t want to pretend that my hands are clean here. I regularly follow the site formerly known as Twitter. I follow a smorgasbord of political journalists, cultured meat experts, animal rights activists, socialists, film critics and New York Knicks fans.

That said, I think anyone on the center left—or, more broadly, anyone who opposes the growing threat of right-wing authoritarianism—should quit X. Twitter has always been a bit of a cesspool, but not since Elon Musk bought the site and turned it into perhaps the world’s largest fascist propaganda tool. Ideas that were previously confined to neo-Nazi message boards have become mainstream.

I don’t want to suggest that Musk is solely responsible for this. Scientists much smarter than me have identified the factors that lead to the rise of fascism. However, I don’t think there is anyone in the United States, other than former President Donald Trump, who has done more to legitimize the far right than Musk. His purchase and transformation of Twitter significantly changed the Overton window.

I admit, it’s easy for me to say that people should leave Twitter. I haven’t spent a significant portion of my career building an audience there like many of the people I follow do. The prospect of giving it up and starting over on another social network must be daunting. However, by providing free content on X, these users are drawing attention to what is essentially a fascist operation.

I also have no illusions about owning alternatives. Let’s take Threads for example. It belongs to billionaire Mark Zuckerberg, an unlikely hero of the left. I suspect he supports Trump. However, Zuckerberg seems to me to be as bad as all the billionaires. Musk is uniquely toxic, in part because he seems more interested in spreading far-right ideas than actually making money.

Of the Twitter clones I’ve tried so far, my favorite is Bluesky, but I don’t really care where the people I follow go. I just want them to move away from X. Again, this is easier said than done, especially for those who have grown a following on Twitter, but I would like for those people to pin a note at the top of their profile letting me know where I am I can find them. go ahead and log out forever.