WARWICK District Council is considering ditching social media platform X – formerly known as Twitter.
Councilors recently agreed to “suspend all use of X immediately” over increasing safety concerns since the world’s richest man Elon Musk bought the platform three years ago.
WDC cite the abolishing of the platform’s Child Safety team, meaning content cannot be checked for child abuse, grooming and self-harm, together with Musk himself using the platform to promote his own views and support extreme right-wing groups in both the UK and US.
WDC’s X account currently has over 12,000 followers and has been the authority’s main social media outlet for
providing time sensitive, urgent messages, such as advising of town centre parking issues or guidance and updates during an emergency.
Concerns have been raised that by no longer using the platform, WDC would lose an important news and information outlet.
And there is also concern the suspension could mean a lack of awareness about what was said about WDC on the platform, which the authority could then not respond to or refute.
WDC’s Cabinet is set to discuss the matter on Thursday.
WDC is investigating the use of other communication possibilities, including community-based WhatsApp groups and increased use of the Cloud9 App – currently used for waste collections – to deliver time sensitive and emergency communications.
Other digital platforms used by WDC include its own website (containing information and reference material) which gets around 117,000 visits a month, Facebook (news channel which encourages interaction with the public) which has 15,200 followers, Instagram (mainly pictorial focusing on news) with 4,000 followers, LinkedIn (sharing news stories) with 6,200 followers, and YouTube (sharing the council’s committee meetings and promotional videos) with 1,000 subscribers.
Other neighbouring councils in Rugby and Solihull have recently left X.
If WDC does opt to no longer use the platform it is likely it would retain the authority’s X- handle to stop it being taken and used as a fake or spoof account.
