IT’S a hotbed of football debate, rumour and banter – for the Scottish game and beyond.
But X – the platform formerly known as Twitter – has seen an exodus of users switching their social media use in the last week.
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With a Scottish football cult hero among them.
On November 6 – the day after the US election – rivals Bluesky became the number one app in Apple‘s App Store and has grown ONE MILLION users in a week.
On the same day more than 115,000 X accounts were deactivated.
One of the biggest names to turn off Twitter this week was The Guardian.
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But there’s a former Celtic ace and his football team doing likewise.
St Pauli announced they were moving to BlueSky on Thursday.
And users following the German side’s midfielder Jackson Irvine are now met with a black screen with the message ‘This account doesn’t exist. Try searching for another’.
The Aussie international had held the tag @jacksonirvine_ since joining Twitter in May 2014.
But in the past 48 hours it appears he has joined the growing masses deactivating their account.
Irvine played once for Celtic, but was loaned to Kilmarnock and Ross County, later becoming a full-time Staggie.
He also had a brief spell with Hibs after playing for Hull and Burton Albion in England.
His club already announced they had abandoned X on Thursday.
St Pauli wrote: “FC St. Pauli is withdrawing from the social media platform, X. The Boys in Brown joined the platform in 2013 and had 250,000 followers.
“Announcing its reasons for withdrawing, the club said that owner Elon Musk had turned a space for debate into an amplifier of hate that was capable of influencing the German parliamentary election campaign.
“Since taking over Twitter, as the platform was previously known, Musk has converted X into a hate machine. Racism and conspiracy theories are allowed to spread unchecked and even curated. Insults and threats are seldom sanctioned and are sold as freedom of speech.
“In addition, following his election victory Donald Trump has picked Musk to head up a new government department. Musk was a major backer of the Trump campaign and also used X for this purpose.
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“It is to be assumed that X will also promote authoritarian, misanthropic and far-right content during the forthcoming German election campaign, this manipulating the public discourse.
“FC St. Pauli had already curbed its use of X and increasingly posted political statements in support of diversity and inclusion to make a stand against hate.
“Now the club is ceasing its activity on X.
“The account will no longer be used, but the content of the last 11 years will remain online in view of its contemporary historical value.
“The club would like to thank its members for the critical exchange on what to do about X and calls on its followers on the platform to switch to BlueSky. FC St. Pauli’s English account will also move to BlueSky.”
Read more on the Scottish Sun
Last week Livingston coach David Martindale bemoaned social media as a CESSPIT.
He reckons platforms are fuelling a rise in abuse aimed at players and managers – and even approached a section of his own support after feeling their criticism had ‘crossed a line’.
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