GAVAN REILLY: 'Twitter has been an enormous part of my life, personal and professional'
Time for an admission you may find either cute or mortifying. When my wife and I were getting married, we got an illustrator to do up a picture of us alongside some of the most significant parts of our lives. I’m sitting at a piano in front of a Today FM microphone; Ciara is standing with a hurley with a stack of schoolbooks. On the piano there’s a West Wing box set, some Frank’s Hot Sauce, a Rubik’s Cube… and a Twitter bird.
Twitter has been an enormous part of my life, personal and professional. I first joined in May 2007, to keep up with count information from the general election while studying in Germany, back in the days when there were so few users that Twitter would literally send you a text message containing the text of any new message from someone you followed. 15 years later, it’s probably not much of an exaggeration to say I owe my career to the platform: it was how I got on the radar of TheJournal.ie while still in college; it was how we built that site’s first audience and I got myself noticed by Today FM; it was how I was able to offer the depth and nuance (beyond the scope of an hourly radio bulletin) that put me on the radar of the then-TV3.
But it’s not the same place any more. Perhaps it’s something that comes with the territory of being a prominent media figure, when people see your posts as professionally motivated and not personal offerings, but the tone of replies and interactions is so negative as to be not much cynical, but outright hostile. Tweet a link to my radio interview with Mary Lou McDonald? First reply: ‘You didn’t ask any policy questions’ (wrong); Second reply: “You’re a puppet for the ruling elite.” Share a pessimistic quote from the UN Secretary General about climate change? First reply: “Bullshit.” Reveal that the State is selling up some more shares in AIB? First reply: ‘Higher bank fees then.’
In 15 years there, and 13 as a working journalist, I’ve developed a thick enough skin for a lot of it. Certainly the pandemic has left a generation who simply presume the media has faithfully repeated everything asked during Covid-19 without question (ironically, people often presume that what you post on Twitter is your work, rather than the calls or texts you send to press officers and officials), and who carry burning grievances as a result. But even with that being said, it feels like the platform now exists to amplify annoyance for attention.
The takeover of Elon Musk now means the moderation on the platform could now change moment to moment. Last week he was supposed to be scrapping lifetime bans; this week he introduced them for some parody accounts. Earlier this year the platform had to remain politically neutral; this week he endorsed Republicans in the U.S. elections. A blue tick supposed to guarantee identity is now simply being sold for those who want more reach, even if they want to be impersonators. Who knows what more is coming – or whether there’s even a plan at all.