Why I Left X

I joined Twitter in 2009 as a sort of a joke. It was the heyday of bloggers, people who we imagined were sitting in their bathrobes writing about politics as if anyone cared.

It was before the days of Substack, or even its brief predecessor Medium. YouTube was mostly for watching videos posted by your friends and Instagram hadn’t yet been invented. Facebook was the dominant social media platform for all purposes.

At the time I was firmly a mainstream media guy. I read the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post. Most weeks I tried to read Roll Call, the dominant insider-D.C. newspaper. Politico was new but seemed mostly like a gossip rag. I watched CNN for news and the Sunday talk shows to gain insider insight.

One day I heard about this thing called Twitter. It was text only and limited to 140 characters. It seemed dumb. What caused me to sign up was its label as a micro-blog. I found the description irresistibly ironic. How could anyone convey real information in such a format? My first bio reflected my mocking tone: “Offering thoughtful commentary on political law and politics — 140 characters at a time.”

Nevertheless, I quickly took to the platform. Its ease to post and its quirky norms — RT meant retweeting, hashtags, etc. — appealed to me. It was fun and interesting. With only a few dozen followers, a typical post of mine from that era looked like this:

For the first decade, I mostly posted about campaign finance, lobbying rules and political law. But I increasingly found it an indispensable part of my news diet. I could follow more news outlets, individual reporters and experts in politics, law, sports and culture. It became my own customized newsfeed.

This was true even when Trump became a candidate, won and became president. Though the site became more sophisticated — it added video and longer tweets — it remained an essential way for me to stay up on politics while also contributing to the discussion happening in the town square.

For me it changed during the 2020 election. By then, my own postings had become more partisan and more political. I was more often posting about voting laws and court cases than I was about campaign finance. With my change in focus came more followers.

In addition to the rest of my work, I had always been known as a leading Democratic litigator with a particular niche in post-election litigation. I had represented Al Franken in what was then the largest and longest recount in U.S. history.

In 2020, I was asked to play a similar role for Joe Biden in case of a close election. As the election approached, it became clear to me that Twitter was a vital tool to combat the misinformation Trump was already spreading.

In the aftermath, as my legal team and I won several recounts and more than 60 cases against Trump and his allies, my Twitter account exploded and never looked back.

That is, until 2024.

Lots of people have written about how Elon Musk changed Twitter — ruined it. But, when I’m being honest, I have to admit that he bought a site that was already on its way to ruin. By the time he bought Twitter in 2022, it was already a hellscape of hate and mistrust. He made its worst parts worse and its best parts less useful.

Opening verification to anyone willing to pay was the first blow, cutting back on content moderation was another. But ultimately, what made Twitter — now called X — no longer worth it for me was that it stopped being useful. The trolls and hate drove away the good people until they were most of what was left. In the end, I have stopped going to Twitter as often as I used to because it became boring.

I must confess, I stayed longer than I wanted, longer than I should have, because it remained an important way for me to grow Democracy Docket — a pro-democracy website that I started in 2020. Democracy Docket grew along with my Twitter following. But recently, Twitter isn’t even doing that particularly well.

After the election, I thought I might just cut back on social media. I had given up Facebook after the 2016 election in protest over its complicity with the Trump campaign. I had never really taken to Instagram and have no plans to ever support the Chinese-run TikTok. I did start a Threads account, but in addition to it just being another Meta product, it has proved aimless at best and hostile at worst to political content like mine.

My interest in social media was rekindled by Bluesky. I had signed up early in its lifecycle and was unimpressed. But its renaissance since the election has impressed me. The culture of blocking hate is refreshing. The lack of a forced algorithm is wonderful. It feels like the early days of Twitter. So, for now, that is where I will be.

I won’t entirely close my Twitter account, but I won’t post anything there other than to tell people to subscribe to Democracy Docket. It will stay dormant waiting (likely in vain) for something there to change. I will follow soon with the same approach to Threads.

Bluesky says it’s billionaire proof. I’m now too experienced and too cynical to believe that is true. If it remains what it is today, I will stay. If not, I will go back to living happily without social media.

But one thing will always remain constant: the news website I built — don’t call it a blog. It is not dependent on Substack or any third-party site. So, my advice to you is if you want to always follow my work, sign up there. It is the one place I will never leave.