Between 30 July and 7 August this year, an estimated 29 anti-immigration riots took place across the UK in response to the stabbing of three young girls at a dance class in Southport. As far-right groups targeted mosques and asylum centres, social media platform X – formally Twitter – was openly blamed by the authorities for fuelling the violence. Its owner Elon Musk posted that civil war in the UK was “inevitable”. 

This saga, along with long-running concerns about the perceived lack of moderation on the platform and debates about its usefulness, has seen millions of users in the UK and abroad stop using their X accounts or deactivate them altogether. 

Certainly in the housing sector, since Musk’s $44bn takeover of the platform in April 2022, the worlds-apart ideologies of the richest person on the planet and many who work in social housing have sparked discussions about whether X is still a useful communication tool, or whether it is now more a weapon for hate best avoided.