On November 3rd, Indivisible National chose to “step back” from X - the platform formerly known as Twitter. We did that for reasons we elaborated on our blog, but can summarize with this excerpt:
“The Twitter we knew — which, despite its many problems over the years, allowed us to build this community and fight for a better world — is now largely gone. The platform has become a megaphone for a bigoted and conspiratorial billionaire, propped up by a subscription scheme that amplifies the voices of transphobes and white nationalists who agree with him and muzzles his critics…When trusted voices begin to leave the platform en-masse, X will lose its appeal, its pull as a source of real-time information, and its remaining legitimacy with policymakers and regular users.”
We know that many candidates, organizations, and individual activists are struggling to reconcile their values with a business-as-usual approach to Musk’s platform. And, at the same time, many have good reasons they are not ready – at least not yet – to delete their accounts and leave completely. We’ve spent a lot of time building our community, and it can be difficult to know how to start fresh. X is the devil we know.
We have released a guide that offers a first, low-risk step anyone and any organization with a substantial following can take to step back from X. It’s not intended as a one-size-fits-all recommendation – groups, individuals, and elected officials ready to leave the platform completely should, by all means, do so. Instead, it is intended to help navigate the first hurdles in the admittedly scary process of de-emphasizing a platform that has been so useful to so many of us for so long – but has now become toxic.
The approach is simple, and we suggest anyone remaining on X adopt it as a minimum commitment to opposing the hateful direction of X and facilitating the growth of better, safer alternatives. You might do this because of your values, or you might do it for self-interest: X is rapidly becoming the uncoolest place on the internet. Pretty soon, only grifters and right-wingers will be on X - and who wants to be seen at that party?
The core of the X-last approach is simply this: Post to alternative platforms before you post to X. Feature your alternative platforms on your X bios and prominently and regularly let your followers know this is what you are doing, and point them to where they can migrate to in order to see your posts first. It’s not as powerful a statement, perhaps, as leaving the platform completely, but it robs X of its one-remaining selling point: that it remains the place for breaking news and following real-time events.