The biggest exploiter of women online

I think there will always be different opinions about whether people feel they are better staying somewhere and fighting or leaving. There are many women’s rights campaigners (or defenders of women and children) who have presumably deciding that they would rather be there, possibly diluting the rest of the content, than leave it to ‘the boys’. Arguably it is more understandable for them to use Twitter, for whom it’s a tool, than people who are on just to see what Katie Price (or whoever) is up to.

These are personal decisions that many users have probably considered deeply.

Yes, but remember how Obama's victory was partly put down to his successful use of Facebook. And after that you had the deliberate manipulation of Facebook users via personal data and algorithms because someone reckoned that was a worthwhile thing to do (Cambridge Analytica). And twitter was bogged up as being a crucial way to reach voters by the left and the right. Traditional print media has declined, lots of people get their news from YouTube or tiktok or watch politicians on podcasts not the news at ten. So, not unreasonably, politicians that want to get elected go to where they think the voters are.
I think X's current importance is and always has been overblown. It was always more popular with journalists so anything going viral on there would be reported elsewhere giving it more reach than it deserved. Now that Musk has it he is very keen to push the narrative people not engaging with it think they are too good for the common voter. But it's less used by actual real people than it ever was. Hopefully it fades from existence soon. But I think female politicians are damned whatever they decide.

Not being on British Gas doesn’t stop them being awful to their customers. But it stops them being awful to me.

Not being there doesn’t stop the abuse.

I honestly don’t understand why anyone would be criticised. If you get shitty service from a company you stop doing business with that company. If you don’t you’re an idiot.

There is absolutely no requirement for politicians (or anyone else) to be on social media, it’s only been around for a few years and they did perfectly fine before then.

I would leave Twitter if I was her. But it is up to her and I think that by being the person to sue (and take the huge amount of flak and images that will come her way as a result) she is doing other women a favourm the problem is even if you are not in Twitter, people can still use Grok.to create pornographic images of you and circulate them. The idea that you can just leave and not see it feels naive, it is the sort of stuff that can have real world impact. And just in itself it is unacceptable.
"If you don't like the boys sharing pornographic drawings of you then don't look at what they are sharing" is gross. I know that's not what you were saying.

@PollyNomial

I think if defenders of women and children (TM) like Her left Twitter,

You don’t think Jess is sincere?

If Jess hasn’t left Twitter, I don’t see why anyone else would. She obviously doesn’t feel there’s any conflict between using the platform and suing Musk.

People should. But then you get the criticisms for not engaging with people with different opinions etc and purity spiralling. Which ignores that it isn't about posting on the same platform as someone with spicy views on what counts as English. It's literally a site that allows other users to create pornographic images of people they dislike and post it straight to their profile. But women will get blamed for leaving, or viewed as weak for enabling themselves to be bullied out.
If it is the "public square" as Elon claims you would think it would be subject to the same levels of behaviour that is expected in actual public squares. Though women have historically been harassed out of those spaces too so maybe it is.

Just leave Twitter. It’s really easy. If more people, especially the people (ie women) who get most abuse there, did so then the problem will solve itself. I left it years ago (also Facebook) when I saw the way things were going. Don’t miss it at all.

I think if defenders of women and children (TM) like Her left Twitter, others would follow. Unfortunately too many of this virtuous crowd appear very happy supporting the abuse that Musk thinks is good for everyone. Almost like these defenders don't mean what they claim.

It’s obscene. Just sickening. Bad enough to do it at all, but the scale of it is frightening, not least because it speaks to the scale of the potential market for the images.

Gaspode I agree that men need to be part of the solution here. But like you, I am sceptical there will be much appetite to step up.

It's abhorrent. The only way to end this, I suspect, would be if men stepped up and made it abundantly clear that they wanted this to stop. However, as with other forms of pornography and violence against women and girls, and innumerable examples of not respecting women's boundaries, other men mostly don't seem to feel strongly enough about it to challenge it. Pretty depressing.