Please forgive the personal note, but in many ways the @NearlyLegal twitter account (yes, I know it was renamed X, but it is twitter) has been an integral part of this site and its growth. So I feel this should be marked here.

After 16 years (dear merciful heavens, 16 years) and 120,800 tweets, I’ve given up on Twitter – or I suppose more precisely, given up on X, that being a part of the parting of ways.

It is no longer possible to continue there without feeling like an under siege resistance fighter, trying to preserve humour, conversation, raising matters of personal and public interest, and frankly keeping self-respect, in the face of what has become a brittle, facile, deceitful, stupidly anger-driven culture that won’t leave you alone. And that is before mentioning the bots – whether pushing disinformation or spam – and the puerile far right/reform brigade who turn up in replies to almost every tweet somehow believing themselves to be making a devastating point with the tweet equivalent of a whoopee cushion at a funeral.

Of course, it has been a lot like this since 2016. But it has got progressively, then rapidly worse. Under Elon Musk and his kindergarten version of ‘freedom of speech’, all moderation of abuse or falsity was removed, and the biggest liars, hate merchants and grifters (not necessarily mutually exclusive categories, and alas including one or two members of the legal profession) allowed to rejoin or continue on the platform.

Most recently, Elon Musk, the owner of X, has taken to amplifying these liars/hate merchants/grifters, from Steven Yaxley-Lennon (‘Tommy Robinson’) to the leader of ‘Britain First’, uncritically and without even a cursory examination of what was being claimed. (Govt to bring in detention camps on the Falkland Islands for far right rioters, anyone? A moment’s thought and understanding of geography would suffice, without even having to look at the legal status of the Falkland Islands…).

And it is the far right, the racists, rabble rousers, and liars purveying fake information to inflame and instigate trouble that Musk champions, and has continued to do so during the last 10 days of violent, targeted racist rioting in the UK. (The X algorithm promotes anger and extremism. It appears that Musk in part has fallen prey to the effects of his own creature.) Platforming false hate to his many millions of followers? That tells you what speech gets privileged.

So, stay and fight? I’ve thought this for some time. But In the end, no. Because X’s income depends on users and views. Engaging means money to Musk (not enough, of course – advertising has fallen off a cliff and by and large the only people paying for ‘premium’ status are the aforesaid liars, grifters and hate merchants, of which there are not enough to save Musk’s foolish investment/borrowing), but I am damned if I am going to play any part in enabling him in that way, even if paying nothing myself. His X will go broke, but let it be sooner rather than later.

I have to mourn Twitter. At its best (before 2016) it was a place of a genuine levelling of conversations, of brilliant humour, shared jokes rippling at lightning speed, of unexpected community and insight, and of being able to bring things beneath the attention of national news media or general knowledge to light. (To some extent that latter continued after 2016, look at the astonishing work of Kwajo Tweneboa, who has been a superb campaigner on social housing conditions starting from a tiny social media base, or at the impact of the leaseholder campaigners who completely changed the political landscape).

Twitter was marvellous for me – not only did a housing law community build up, but it put me in contact with journalists, politicians, campaigners and many individuals. A lot of interesting and good cases came to me through Twitter.  The Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act 2018 would not have happened if it was not for Twitter, where Justin Bates KC and I had already been talking to Karen Buck (MP as was, Dame Buck as she now is). It was a key to my personal profile being built (though that was not a deliberate aim) and to media contacts, but I think at the same time, it played a role in getting knowledge of housing law and housing issues out to many, many people, including those trying to deal with their own situations.

Who would have thought a housing law specialist account could end up with almost 40,000 followers? Certainly not me. (About 8,000 of those have now gone. People are leaving ‘X’ in droves – I don’t think it was something I said…)

Twitter has given me much, from laughter, through friends that I still have that I would not otherwise have met, education from people I would not otherwise have met, through to my proudest career moment with the H(FFH)A. But the fragments of that experience that remain are not worth the daily grief of blocking and reporting, watching the spirals of hate and lies, and knowing that in whatever small way, I am contributing to the continuance of that.

It might seem like cheating, but I am not deleting the @NearlyLegal account. Partly, I will admit, in the faintest of hopes that twitter might return, maybe under new ownership, but mostly because I do not want some scumbag, spammer or bot to take over the account. I will keep it alive by tweeting new posts on here. But that is it, I will not be on ‘X’ otherwise.

I am not giving up on social media – I remain on linkedin (though that is increasingly weird and heaven spare me the headhunters). I am on Threads as nearlylegal, but struggle with it actually working as an acceptable platform. I have mainly moved to blue sky (https://bsky.app/ ) as @nearlylegal.co.uk  So far, it works well, and reminds me a lot of pre 2016 twitter – funny and with interesting people to discover and talk to. I am, it seems, far from alone in that. So if you are on blue sky, find me, or if you fancy, join and see what you think. It is a work of starting from scratch, but, after a lot of thought, that’s OK, and might even be fun… Fun has been missing for too long.