OK, so you’re really, really sick of Musk’s antics now and finally want to make the leap to something else. Here’s your super quick guide how to do so. Do you need to close your Twitter account? Your choice, but not necessarily – my account is still, technically, there but […]
Tag: Twitter
In a conversation? Or being talked about? Social or parasocial? We’re at cross purposes when thinking about Twitter alternatives
15 years ago The Common Craft Show did this little explainer about Twitter: What strikes me above all is how personal all of this is. The essence of this has been on my mind for the past few weeks, as we try and try again to find something to replace […]
From #UKriots on Twitter, to Bluesky and Mastodon – it’s only once we lose something that we are conscious of why it mattered
Back in the summer of 2011 I had a bit a tricky conundrum. I needed to get from Bow in East London to Camden in North London avoiding the riots that were happening at that time. And ideally I needed to make the trip by bike. And a community had […]
The demise of Twitter: don’t whine, organise!
Out of the window of the train just north of Brussels you can see the poster pictured here – Niet panikeren, organiseren it says. Don’t panic, organise in English. The past few days a slightly alternative slogan has been on my mind. Don’t whine, organise! We’ve had Sarah Manavis writing for The New Statesman […]
In EU politics we treated Twitter as a social network, not as digital public infrastructure – and built it all on a platform we do not control
Looking back it was a pretty good dozen years in many ways. From when I started using Twitter for EU political purposes early in 2009 until it all started to go wrong throughout 2022 I managed to achieve a hell of a lot on that platform. But it was based […]
Twitter: exit. Because you have no voice to change it, and Musk does not deserve your loyalty.
I’m not going to get into a discussion about whether what Musk is doing to Twitter is by accident or by design. All I know is that Twitter is, at the time of writing, a network I no longer want to be a part of. Since Musk’s takeover in October […]
Tweetbot 6 review: hello old friend, we might meet again, but not just yet
As a very heavy Twitter user, for years I was a fan of Tweetbot on iOS, an independent Twitter app made by Tapbots. Using an independent app made sense as I could configure how everything would display according to my needs, rather than Twitter chose that for the sake of […]
How we tweet about Brexit
For years now Twitter has been my main professional social network. It is (or has been?) the way to keep in touch with what is going on in politics, and to seek to influence it in some way. I have also written a lot about it – all gathered here. […]
In praise of the Brexit Twitter nerds
I am not sure this answer to a troll by Jean-Claude Piris this morning will change the guy’s mind. But “I have written a good part [of it]” when it comes to understanding the Treaty of Lisbon is a tremendous put down. That’s not all though. I am followed by […]
Political online communication in Germany
One of my nagging worries about political communication online, and through social media, is the inequality of it. We are still stuck with the idea that social media gives everyone a voice and, to an extent, that is true. But when everyone has a voice, how do you separate the […]
Everyday tech ethics
A couple of months ago I had a conversation with two academic friends of mine about why they refused to use any messenger other than WhatsApp. “We just want it to work!” they said. “Well, Volkswagen cars work” I hit back. “That’s different,” they said. But then what about fairly […]
A little Twitter spat with Andrew Neil
Just under 48 hours ago I spotted a tweet from the BBC’s well known political journalist Andrew Neil – someone retweeted it into my timeline: Germany tonight in its biggest political crisis since late 1940s. Bigger even than UK’s current ongoing political crisis. — Andrew Neil (@afneil) November 20, 2017 […]