An unsettling anniversary is approaching: it’s been almost exactly a year since I last posted on X and switched my social media efforts wholesale to Bluesky. After two years watching the platform I loved morph into the toxic playground of the most insecure billionaire in the world, I gave up fighting for it. Much as the anti-Bluesky-ers like to think we’re lefty snowflakes who can’t stand rigorous debate, my Irish goodbye (I resisted the urge to write an impassioned essay about leaving) was not about ideology. It just wasn’t fun any more. Elon Musk’s ego-driven algorithm had destroyed all the things that made me addicted to the site I still call Twitter: bots and trolls reigned, links were penalised, and anyone attempting actual discourse quickly found themselves inundated with vitriol and threats. When I received anti-Semitic abuse after tweeting about housing policy and cats, I knew it was time to go.

So I have observed with sadness the row at the start of this year, as Musk’s X-enabled AI, Grok, learned to provide sexualised images of real women – and children. As a furious debate raged in Westminster as to whether the government would push Ofcom to ban X outright for UK users, I noted the MPs still contentedly using the site. Some of them, on the Reform and ex-Reform bench, even get paid for it.

I watched people I respect argue that for ministers to stop posting on X would be an attack on free speech. I watched commentators who spent the summer righteously crusading for the safety of women and girls insist it is not a violation to have a fully clothed photo of yourself stripped to a bikini by AI and edited into a pose indicating sexual violence. I grew weary of the eagerness to bat away criticism of X by complaining about the stuffy culture on Bluesky, as though a propensity for mild sanctimony should be considered as off-putting as an integrated nudification tool being used to create child sexual abuse material.

Then, just like that, it was all over. Musk caved, Grok was amended and Westminster breathed a sigh of relief that we wouldn’t be getting into a tariff war with Donald Trump’s White House over the right to have a sovereign tech policy – at least not right this second. Bluesky welcomed an influx of X refugees, including a parade of MPs, but otherwise it’s business as usual. UK politics is playing out once again on the X stage – when Kemi Badenoch decided to sack Robert Jenrick, she announced it via a post on the platform. Might the Tory leader have chosen a different broadcast outlet had she been depicted in her underwear by an aggrieved Grok user? We’ll never know.

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What I do know, a year since leaving X, is that I miss it. It comes at a professional cost, being outside the room where it’s happening, in politics at least. I used to get career opportunities via Twitter – I’ve no doubt I’ve missed out on some since leaving. But more than that, I miss the old magic. I miss the days of serendipity and connection, relationships forged through a shared love of niche fan culture and cats. I miss the random discussions that spiralled outwards, bringing you into the orbit of experts, or minor celebrities, or people who would become lifelong friends. I married one of them. That magic no longer exists on X. That’s helpful, in a way. It frees me from deciding whether it would be worth staying in Musk’s porn-addled domain for it.

I’d love to say that I’ve been reading more books now and feeling the sunshine on my skin. The truth is that I just get my online fix elsewhere. But it turned out overcoming an addiction I had thought all-consuming wasn’t so hard after all; X abandoned me long before I abandoned it. I won’t presume to make anyone else’s choices for them, but a tip for those who are reluctant to share a platform with whatever Musk and Grok do next but scared to leave: I promise, there is life on the other side. There are even cats.

[Further reading: Britain’s housebuilding crisis on my block]