Once mighty Twitter is now a mess of hate speech, bots and porn, writes Natasha Devon

It was just so much fun – an irresistible mixture of the latest news in bitesize form, gossip, irreverent observations from clever people, dad jokes and cat pictures.

On Saturday and Sunday evenings in winter, the nation would gather around the television to watch the X Factor, phones clutched as we poised to share our minute-by-minute observations, searchable on the hashtag. Caitlin Moran was the reigning UK queen of the platform at the time, and it felt as though we had access to almost every fleeting thought that crossed her brilliant mind. I know people who met and fell in love on Twitter. I know people who made lifelong friends via the process of firing 140 characters worth of lol-worthy comments at one another. Yes, there was trolling back then, but it was relatively benign and usually resulted in the target quote tweeting with a hilarious counter-burn we could all enjoy.

Fast forward to 2026 and Twitter, now renamed X, is about to ‘celebrate’ its 20th anniversary of going public. I’m no longer on the platform, since a combination of algorithmic tweaks and the unceremonious dispensing of most of their content moderation team has rendered it unrecognisable from its original form.

The blue tick system, once used (as it is on most other platforms) to denote that the person tweeting is who they claim to be, has been replaced by a paid-for scheme. For a monthly subscription, users can ensure their comments are prioritised in feeds. Hate speech invariably no longer results in suspensions. Previously banned accounts from far-right and other extremist figures have been reinstated in the name of ‘free speech’. In fact, an investigation by Sky News revealed that far-right and extreme content is pushed into users’ feeds regardless of their own interests or political affiliations. The Prime Minister had to step in after it was revealed that the platform’s AI assistant, Grok, was being used to create abuse images of women and children. Independent cybersecurity experts estimate that up to 84 million accounts on the platform are bots.

To summarise: the once mighty Twitter has been reduced to a mess of hate speech, bots and porn.

These changes can be tracked back to when the platform was bought by Elon Musk in October 2022. According to BBC analysis, he posts an average of 60 to 100 tweets per day to his 240 million-plus followers. This equates to about 1 post every 15 minutes during waking hours, which must be a curious thing to reckon with if you’re the sort of person who believes that in order to become the world’s first trillionaire, one has to work extremely hard.

Much of his output seems dedicated to meddling in the democracies of countries in which he does not reside. He is an outspoken fan of the AFD (‘Alternative for Deutschland’ – a far-right, populist political party in Germany), Tommy Robinson and Rupert Lowe. Meanwhile, political ideas that would have seemed unspeakably horrific just ten years ago (like ‘remigration’, otherwise known as ethnic cleansing) have been normalised by users who can monetise attention-grabbing content.

Many, including our government, continue to use X (although some departments have paused their activity). Those who cling to the carcass of the platform insist that if they abandon it, they will leave it in the hands of the far right and there’ll be no dissenting voices. Arguably though, that’s the situation now.

2010-me is sad to assess that the best thing we could all do is turn our backs on it and hope it withers and dies.

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

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