A year ago, I wrote:

it does all lead me to wonder if the tide is turning, and whether by this time next year we’ll still see the same constant exhortations by television and radio programmes to follow their people on Twitter and to Tweet out our opinions. Maybe enthusiasm really is waning.

This was based on the toxic nature of the site and the strong evidence around its impact on mental health. And this was six months or so before Elon Musk took control of the site, a development that can’t be said to have improved either of these factors.

If anything, the TV exhortations to use Twitter have only increased. Most bulletins on the BBC News Channel now feature the presenter asking the viewer to follow them on Twitter. When I was growing up, it would have been unimaginable for a BBC newsreader to actively promote a non-BBC service from behind the desk. Now they do it almost hourly, and for free, for a service that seems to cause the BBC endless trouble.

We live in strange times.

The picture at the top of this post is an AI-generated image created by OpenAI’s DALL-E 2.