Social media platform X has seen a mass exodus of high profile legal figures after they branded the site’s CEO Elon Musk ‘toxic’ in response to the controversial billionaire’s attitude following the UK riots.
South African Musk, who took over Twitter in 2022 – rebranding the platform ‘X’, has been accused of ‘fanning the flames’ of unrest after he publicly called for judges to be arrested. Musk said a Cumbrian judge who jailed a Sellafield worker for publishing ‘racist’ content on Facebook should be arrested instead of the 51-year-old Lee Joseph Dunn, jailed on Monday for ‘grossly offensive’ posts.
Musk – who has more than 194 million followers on X – tweeted: “The judge is the one who should be arrested.” The billionaire also said Britain was now an ‘Orwellian dystopia’ and criticized the UK legal system, saying it was in need of ‘comprehensive reform’.
In response to Musk’s public outbursts legal professionals have said they will no longer use the site and many left the platform altogether.
Employment solicitor Sundeep Bhatia, owner of Beaumonde Law Practice exited the site saying: “On account of toxic Musk, I am leaving the platform after 14 years. Some have the Midas touch. Others turn gold into sand. Goodbye, farewell and Amen!”
A barrister with the username @crimegirl announced to her 67,000 followers that she could no longer remain an active participant of X, tweeting for the last time she said: “Elon Musk fanned the flames that cause friends and colleagues in immigration to fear for their lives. They have been unable to go into their offices. Buildings were set alight with refugee families inside. This is abhorrent in a free and peaceful democracy.”
Barrister Daniel Barnett of Outer Temple Chambers, who presents LBC’s legal hour every Saturday, told his 20,000 followers that he is ‘leaving twitter and moving to another platform, at least for now and probably forever. I no longer enjoy being here. My new details are in my user name. It’s been a fabulous decade or so, but nothing lasts forever. Thank you, everyone, for the friendship.’
Gordon Exall, a barrister from Kings Chambers who tweets as @CivilLitTweet, announced that his account will be ‘mothballed’.
Steve Peers, professor of EU law and human rights law at Royal Holloway, told his 150K following: “I won’t be on here as long as the owner is a far right freak who whines about the “right” to incite race riots, promotes violent racist extremists who incite them, and post racist memes himself,’ he said, adding that he will move onto Threads and BlueSky.”
The boycott includes a law firm called Crane and Staples, based in Welwyn Garden City, who said they would no longer use the site, however they left the reason to speculation.
The Twitter snub comes as the Law Society released a statement after a list of law firms described as ‘targets’ was posted to the platform. Law firms dealing with immigration have been threatened alongside individual lawyers, prompting the society to declare support for the government as they deal with the ongoing unrest.
One Response
I don’t think the issue is the judicial bashing so much since that’s a daily occurrence on and off line. The issue is that Musk has tweeked the platform such that it now shows you far right posts from both real people and bots while hiding replies from followers who haven’t paid Musk for a blue tick. The platform as a whole is rapidly becoming unusable and just a thoroughly nasty place to be.