‘Threads is just deathly dull’: have Twitter quitters found what they are looking for on other networks?

There’s been an exodus of users from X, propelled by Elon Musk’s lurch to the far right, but the alternatives have drawbacks too

“Being on @Threads this week has been a bit like sitting on a half-empty train early in the morning while it slowly starts to fill up with people jumping on with horror stories about how bad the service is on the other line,” posted the actor David Harewood on Meta’s Twitter/X rival, which from the volume of new joiners asking “Hey, how does this work?” appeared, in the UK at least, to be having a post far-right riots bounce last week.

To which some might ask, what’s taken the Threads newbies so long? To say Elon Musk’s tenure as the owner of the social network formerly known as Twitter and now renamed X has been unconscionable – recent highlights include unbanning numerous far-right and extremist accounts and his one-man misinformation campaign about the UK’s far-right anti-immigrant riots – would be a criminal understatement.