Reports of Twitter's decline may be greatly exaggerated

A certain high profile celebrity, who's too irksome to mention, has already announced her stropping off of the social media platform in response to the news.

Rafts of people you've never heard of are doing the same thing. It's going to make the place toxic, Tweeters cry, thanks to Mr Musk's free speech absolutism.

Well, have I got news for you. Social media largely survives by generating agitation.

Just about everyone is angry on Twitter, fury and sarcasm drive engagement. It's like the comments section of newspapers - or the inboxes of journalists. People are far more like to make the effort to write in with a complaint than they are with a compliment.

It's just that they previously had to look out sheets of paper and make sure their pens were fuelled with ink. Now they can jot out a pithy electric missive from the toilet.

Twitter's founder, Jack Dorsey, tweeted of the news that the social media platform wants "to be a public good".

An intergalactic public good, no less. "I’m so happy Twitter will continue to serve the public conversation," he added, "Around the world, and into the stars!"

"I trust his mission," and here it gets a little more complex, "To extend the light of consciousness." Into the stars?

I feel fortunate to have a relatively nice time on Twitter, whether it's extending the light of my consciousness or not. I'm perhaps too dull a character to attract the worst the site has to offer. It's only when I'm tagged in tweets with other female reporters that I see the true cesspit potential of the platform.

On Monday morning I was on the radio with another woman journalist and my notifications were clogged up with unpleasant replies, none of them aimed at me, I was just in the crossfire - she was in the crosshairs.

Ditto yesterday, I gave a talk to a professional body in my role as Secretary of Women in Journalism Scotland alongside Dr Jennifer Jones, who is also on the WiJS committee. Within minutes I was being tagged in tweets about Dr Jones being an MI5 agent.

If only they knew that, in fact, I am the MI5 agent and my cunning diversion is paying off.

That's not to say I haven't faced abuse. It's always astonishing what riles people enough to come at you with written rapiers. In particular, an unsavoury episode some years ago where, in my youthful naivety, I wrote a column I believed to be lighthearted.

It infuriated a particular demographic of car enthusiasts who were exceptionally quick to ensure I felt their ire. I did, and it was relentless.

But the key word there is "fortunate". No one should feel fortunate to not be relentlessly abused. That state of being should be the default.

My favourite Twitter insult of all time involves a succession of words improper for use in a family newspaper so I apologise in advance. It ran: "Catriona Stewart is a front bottom. Not funny enough to be a f**** and not interesting enough to be a c***."

That makes me chortle every time I think of it. What a burn. But it's not abuse, or at least I don't feel it to be such.

Twitter currently has moderation policies designed to alleviate harassment. This can sometimes come as a surprise to women and to minorities, who face the worst of the abuse and often find their calls for help from the site to ring out into a void.

Elon Musk brings with him the worrying frisson of feeling the floodgates are about to opened, releasing a torrent of previously contained abuse to saturate the site.

“Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy," Mr Musk said in his statement about the takeover, "And Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated."

This must be what sets the successful entrepreneur apart from mere plodding mortals. "The future of humanity". "Extend the light of consciousness". To be grandiose with a straight face, that's the key.

Criticism and abuse or harassment are two quite disparate beasts. It's not particularly clear that Musk understands this, perhaps because, as a white male, he's not the target demographic for the really nasty stuff.

Concerns are that an extreme limit on moderation could be the new way forward for Twitter but it's tricky to see what speech Musk wants to be included that isn't already there. It doesn't take much digging around to find a range of distasteful views, abusive views, misinformation and disinformation.

We know from much discussion about behaviour at the House of Commons this week that viewing pornography is not a particularly smart move at work but there's a ton of that on Twitter and sometimes it pops up, pardon the pun, when you least expect it.

All the world is there. Those who suffer from online aren't asking to be coddled or protected from views they dislike - they are asking to be protected from specifically that: abuse.

The site currently has 217 million daily users, which really isn't that many, in the grand scheme of things. While the platform may be a plaything for Mr Musk, who has more money than can be spent in many lifetimes, he is an entrepreneur and, one must assume, plans to have some sort of expansion scheme.

On a site with a largely male demographic, the most obvious expansion aim is to bring in more women, non-binary people and minorities.

It's hard to do that when your brand is anything goes bullying.

In saying that, Twitter gets a bad rap. The mute and the block buttons are your friend, as are the functions to filter out certain words. I hear a lot of journalists who like to say they're only on social media for work but I don't think that's true.

For nosey people; people who like debate, or just watching others arguing; or people who want to expand their networks, it can be am addictive tool. I've met people on Twitter who are now real life friends.

Given that Twitter has to abide by the laws of the countries it functions in, it seems unlikely that Musk will be able to entirely roll back protections for people using the site and undo the work of Twitter staff, who have acted in the past few years to try to clean up the site's act.

For now, his only option is to be bound by earthly rules. But who knows what's next. Into the stars!