About a year ago I left Twitter (or X), a decision based on concerns about the platform’s increasingly toxic environment.
The decision was right, and has been borne out by the recent far right riots in the UK, where misinformation, outright lies, and the way in which the platform as allowed racists and nazis to spew forth their toxic rhetoric, as well as allowing the perpetrators of these riots and acts of terror to organise (I live near Tamworth where racists tried to burn down a hotel where migrants were housed).
And of course its not just Racists that make it toxic, Anti LGBTQ+ and misogyny are also normalised on there.
Today I was approached by a senior person in a UK institution asking my opinion on whether his institution should maintain a presence on the site. When I ran the Jisc Digital Leaders course one of the key elements that Donna Lanclos and I discussed about staff use of social media was “always model the behaviour you want to see in your staff and students”. This was a way of combating the toxicity in some respects. But I believe that Twitter has crossed the Rubicon with regard to a descent into hostility and toxicity.
Institutions have a duty of care towards our students, staff and communities. Would we send our LGBTQ+ students on fieldwork to countries with policies that make them “illegal persons” or place our ethnic minority students in at-risk situations. Twitter, or X, is a place, somewhere people go to engage and interact. When we send students, and others in our community, there are we putting them at risk?
Plenty of academics post on Twitter – tell their students they will find it on the social spaces, Institutions are also telling staff and students they will find information “on the socials”.
Colleagues, Twitter is not going to get less toxic, your use of it supports it.
We need to reconsider our engagement with platforms that compromise the well-being and safety of our communities.
Lawrie, you and I go a long way back and have always had simialr views. I would like to know how your employer, Jisc, justify the support they have given social media platforms in the past when some of us have been sceptical from the start about social media companies and the hate they nurture – this isn’t a new phenomena you talk about. I wrote to Jisc’s senior management years ago about the need for regulation and support when it came to the hate/abuse tolerated and aimed at female politicians and professionals and how the sector could take a stand againt the big tech companies. No reply. I felt uncomfortable about the endorsement and unquestionning support Jisc gave to social media companies (see the @Jisc post about Eric Stoller ‘Standing (or sitting) room only at @EricStoller’s talk on why educators can’t live without social media #digifest16’ . This has been a long time coming and it’s been ignored by the sector and those who have been standing to one side muttering about the harm unregluated social media does have often been branded technophobes, old fashioned or anti innovation. The HE digital community have been lax and dazzled by new shiny things and now we are in a fix.