If politicians hate what X has become, why are they still there? writes Natasha Devon

She was right to do so. Whilst Musk denies politically motivated algorithm-tweaking, when he took over Twitter, it almost instantly became a sewer of far-right, racist and misogynist bilge, which users had to wade through before attempting anything resembling a civilised discussion.

Additionally, the team that runs X seemingly does almost nothing to curb disinformation and hate speech. In fact, Musk regularly shares disinformation with his 228 million followers. As we saw with the hideous riots of summer 2024, it only takes a minority of angry people to inflict chaos and violence on our streets.

Arguably, without Farage amplifying disinformation about the perpetrator of the Southpark attack, which killed three local girls in Southport via his X account, those riots would never have occurred (hence why they are colloquially referred to as the ‘Farage riots’).

Yet I couldn’t help but reflect after Daisy Cooper’s question upon the fact that she herself has an active X account, as do her party the Liberal Democrats and their leader Ed Davey.

Since social media makes money through engagement, surely the logical thing would be for those who are critical of X to remove themselves from it (as I and millions of others have already done)?

The argument of those who have persisted in using X is that they get to see ‘what people are saying’. The implication is that being on X allows one to temperature test the public mood. This might once have been true, but it certainly isn’t in 2025.

Liberal, left-wing, and marginalised voices have fled X in their droves, either in protest or because the impact of enduring endless online abuse was detrimental to their wellbeing.

Meanwhile, paid-for blueticks are given priority in terms of their visibility. Far be it from me to prejudge a person who would willingly give their hard-earned cash to line the pockets of a man who can now reasonably be described as an oligarch, but the net result is that the overall tone of X is extremely right-wing, overwhelmingly supportive of Trump, Reform, Netanyahu and the AFD.

It’s become a place where Tommy Robinson and Katie Hopkins are heroes, which would have been unthinkable just a few years ago.

Yet, as the recent victory of Zohran Mamdani in New York, Rob Jetten in the Netherlands, Catherine Connolly in Ireland and Nicusor Dan in Romania show, the kick-back against the far right is in ascendance.

Here in the UK the Green Party are surging in popularity under Zack Polanski (they are now the most popular party amongst voters under 50) and we saw the definitive rejection of Reform’s divisive tactics in the by-election in Caerphilly.

Unimaginable amounts of money and resources have been poured into the far-right project by assorted billionaires and lobby groups, and yet they aren’t sweeping the board as they anticipated.

I worry as I see (via other social media platforms, where the conversations are often regurgitated) MPs spending their time bickering with commentators on X. Being immersed in that grubby little silo will influence their perception of where the ‘average voter’ is at.

Perhaps this was always Musk’s intention (after all, rich people generally don’t buy businesses which reportedly haemorrhage profit out of the goodness of their hearts).

If politicians want to take a real stand against X and Elon Musk, they should vote with their feet.

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Listen to LBC's Natasha Devon on Saturdays from 6-9pm on the new LBC app.

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