Free Speech Union to LEAVE X Following Rise in Hate Speech
As some of you may or may not know, I’m the Research Director at the Free Speech Union — a non-partisan, mass membership organisation that defends the speech rights of nearly 30,000 members across the UK.
I was honoured to be asked to draft this hugely important press statement, scheduled for release at 9am on April Fools’ Day. I’m sure I speak on behalf of all my colleagues at the Free Speech Union when I say it marks the start of our healing journey.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE (1st April 2025)
STATEMENT: The Free Speech Union is Leaving X (Formerly Twitter)
After long and careful deliberation, the Free Speech Union (FSU) has decided to leave X. This decision has not been taken lightly and follows a consultation with the Centre for Decolonising Knowledge at Sussex University, as part of wider efforts to refocus our operational priorities on social justice outcomes and deliver on our five-year plan to become the UK’s first truly ‘anti-racist’ trade union.
Recent developments on the platform make it clear that X no longer aligns with our values. For several months, we have been deeply troubled by the miasma of ‘whiteness’ that has enveloped the platform, dramatically increasing the volume of unfettered commentary, unauthorised satire, and – most distressingly – people disagreeing with us.
This trend towards so-called ‘viewpoint diversity’ has been tolerated – even encouraged – by the platform’s leadership, who appear to believe that ‘free speech’ includes views our General Secretary, Lord Young, finds personally irritating.
The FSU joined Twitter back in 2020 in the belief that it would be a safe space to publicise our successes, criticise government legislation, and defend the speech rights of our members. But it has become something else entirely: a chaotic, unpredictable arena in which users engage in counter-speech, commit microaggressions, and perpetuate hateful narratives that many of our staff find triggering.
While X’s relatively recent embrace of ‘free speech absolutism’ may appeal to some, we favour social media platforms with a more nuanced approach – ones that interpret Article 10 of the ECHR in the correct way: namely, by going above and beyond the Online Safety Act and empowering their algorithms to ban, gently de-boost, or shadowban our critics.
At the FSU, we may not agree with what you say about us, but we will defend to the death the right of Big Tech to ensure you say it only to yourself.
Effective from midnight on 1st April, we will be relocating to a platform more in keeping with our core principle of only posting in a progressive echo chamber, alongside other cloistered members of the metropolitan professional classes who regard ‘constant repetition of dogma’ as a synonym for ‘public dialogue’. As a result, you will soon be able to find us on BlueSky.
Click here for more details about the FSU.
It's getting harder to spot spoofs ... not only because they aren't very common in this time of curtailment of free speech, but the humour is darker, there being precious little to laugh about.
We all need a holiday from the persistent gloom of government interference, woke, accusations of racism and all the rest of the BS.
At 24 hours, April Fools Day just isn't long enough.
Well that’s a surprise. The FSU are leaving the only free speech platform available without censorship .
The now “Lord” Young seems to have allowed the trappings of establishment to seduce him!!!!!