Changes To Our Social Media Policy
We’ve revised our social media policy due to the events currently unfolding on X/Twitter. Read on to find out why we’re making this change and where you’ll be able to find us from now on
I’m sure you’re aware that there have been massive changes over on the X/Twitter platform since Elon Musk took over back in October 2022.
When he first started, we continued to post both new content and evergreen content to the site although once he introduced throttling the reach of accounts without a blue checkmark we saw our views and post interactions fall significantly until we went from getting thousands of views per post to under 10.
But, we stuck with it as we knew that the platform was, at the time, a vital way of reaching current and new readers.
Until it wasn’t.
With the drastic loss in views, rate limiting the number of posts people can read, hiding our content behind a subscriber-only wall and reinstating a variety of hate speech accounts, it was becoming clear that X no longer aligned with the values of FlippingHeck.com where we all strive to be inclusive and tolerant of all.
After the terrible events of the 29th of July in the UK where I am based, which saw the tragic deaths of 3 young girls, misinformation quickly spread across X and the platform made no attempt to curb it, flag it as false or to halt the racist rhetoric that surrounded the events.
You can read more about the tragic events and the riots that followed on my other website, Politically Inclined: Let’s Call It What It Is: They’re Rioters, Not Protesters.
After the riots that ensued, X again took no stance on the misinformation and allowed vile hate speech to run rampant on the platform and it was at this point I realised that I could no longer allow our content to live on a platform where hate is promoted if you have a blue checkmark and genuine advice and helpful content gets buried.
It was also announced around this time that X would be using our content, which we work hard on, to train its AI “Grok” and while you can apparently opt-out, given Musk’s lacklustre track record of following regulations I do not trust the opt-out option at all.
On the 4th of August I took the difficult decision to delete our presence from X after being able to remove ourselves from some posting requirements we had with a company we work with.
All content has now been deleted from x.com/FlipHeck and we will be slowly removing followers and who we follow over the coming days and weeks.
I have made the decision to keep the account alive – although it may be privated in the future – as I hope that someone with better intentions may be able to take over and bring back Twitter to the way it was before the trolls ran rampant. If I were to deactivate the account that would mean someone else could take the handle and use it for whatever purposes they wish and I do not want that to happen.
So where do we go from here?
We’re now actively positing on the following platforms so hopefully one of these will enable you to keep up with all the great content we have planned for the future:
I hope you can understand the reasoning behind the decision. Elon Musk will not change the way he runs X until enough people leave and he is forced to listen, if he’s not persuaded by a 40% drop in profits and advertisers leaving in their droves, maybe a sharp decline in users will help point him in the right direction.
You can see all our links in one place on our LinkTree and if there’s somewhere else you think we should be posting, please let us know in the comments.
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