Elon Musk has kept the British media busy in recent days, after persistently posting criticism of UK politicians over the grooming gangs scandal – and even calling for Prime Minister Keir Starmer to be incarcerated. But actions have consequences and the billionaire businessman may soon be about to see what happens when he’s deemed to have gone too far. In fact the Twitter CEO may be about to feel the wrath of the Scottish National party which, reports claim, is considering leaving the social media site for greener pastures. However will Musk cope?
Scotland’s First Minister John Swinney has admitted that he is still on Twitter at the moment because he wants to ‘use all channels to communicate with the public’. But the SNP leader has warned that he and the Scottish government could stop using the platform altogether if it was no longer deemed ‘appropriate’. The FM went on to raise concerns about ‘how it has been used by Elon Musk’ and nodded to public scepticism of the site and its ‘appropriateness…as a communications channel’. What a loss that would be…
Twitter isn’t the only platform the nationalist leader is worried about. Swinney went on to register his concern about Meta’s decision to drop its third-party fact checkers and instead use community notes (where the site’s own users insert addendums to pre-existing post) to correct misleading information online.
Not that the relationship between Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg and the SNP is at its, er, rosiest stage just now. The Scottish government announced in December that it will ban the use of another of the company’s social media apps, WhatsApp, from official devices in the wake of the Covid Inquiry. Might the Nats have their sights set on more covert forms of communication? It hasn’t escaped Mr S’s attention that some SNP figures have joined up to social platform Telegram – which offers self-destructing messages and secret chats for extra privacy – in recent weeks. It’s certainly one way to avoid your embarrassing message exchanges being aired in public…
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