News and views about philosophy, the academic profession, academic freedom, intellectual culture, and other topics. The world’s most popular philosophy blog, since 2003.
Georgy Maksimovich pointed me to this article in Russian: https://novayagazeta.ru/articles/2026/05/25/antisovetskie-filosofskie-kontratseptsii
David J. Gunkel «Person, Thing, Robot: A Moral and Legal Ontology for the 21st Century and Beyond» (MIT, 2023) Link:…
Giovanni Molteni Tagliabue (Italy) Rationalized and Extended Democracy – The REDemo Project. Foreword by Gilberto Corbellini. Firenze University Press 2023.…
Porphyry of Tyre on Theology and Theurgy (Harvard University Press & Center for the Study of World Religions, 2026) Permanently…
[…] Brian Leiter (Chicago), The American Bar Association Needs to Investigate Texas Tech Law School for Violating the First Amen…:…
[…] Spacetime does not exist – Leiter Reports, accessed May 23, 2026. Source […]
Saul Smilansky PARADOXICAL ETHICS (Oxford University Press, 2026). Available by Open Access. https://academic.oup.com/book/62721?login=false Paradoxical Ethics is a unique book, exploring…
Philosopher Jc Beall raised a question which I also wonder about: "It would be very interesting to know whether any philosophers are staying on Twitter and — this is what I'm curious about — *why*." So readers who use social media, if you're staying with X, what are your reasons? This is asked out of genuine curiosity; I can imagine reasons, but would like to hear what philosophers are thinking.
I'm not on twitter so perhaps not the best person to answer, but it doesn't seem puzzling to me that someone would stay on twitter. The whole point of a social network is that that's where other people are. I am on Facebook. If I decided that Facebook was being used for nefarious purposes (maybe you think it already is), it would still take some time for me to leave, because a lot of my friends and family are there too. Leaving is a coordination problem, made all the more difficult by the fact that many of the people you'd like to coordinate with (ie, people whose posts you'd like to see, and who you'd like to see your posts) have different values and priorities from you. So it's no surprise that it's a difficult coordination problem, and that alternatives to Twitter (Mastodon, Bluesky, others?) still don't have anything like its volume. Maybe they will! This stuff is hard to predict. Friendster never took off. Myspace is no more.
I imagine it's a collective action problem. People don't want to be left out, but the only way in which they leave and don't get left out is if enough other people also leave. And every person who doesn't leave creates the impression that leaving will result in being left out.
My research involves direct engagement with the ideas and leadership of the New Right. They live on Twitter. In general, if you want to talk to young people about politics who aren’t on the left, Twitter is the best place to reach them.
Not a full-time philosopher. I read X posts but don't post there. I stay on to see what righties are saying and how they're saying it so I can keep up with what others are being told. But I might leave given the emotional toll and fear of succumbing to propaganda (I think we overestimate our resistance to it). Also, you can still get some good baseball commentary there (which reminds me of left-wing dad reading a right-wing tabloid because of its superior sports page).
Kevin's reason is an interesting one, and that makes sense. I'm doing my part to solve the collective action problem. I've picked up some 400 followers in the last few days, and, interestingly, most of them appear to be adults and professors…which is the audience I want, but obviously wouldn't suit a purpose like Kevin's.
I try and avoid cognitive bubble spaces. For what I hope are rather obvious epistemological reasons. But if unavoidable,then a self-selected bubble centered on political grievances is probably not the place to go.
With a decently sized following on Twitter, I'm staying there for now, though moving most posts to BlueSky. Getting good engagement at BlueSky, and hope it grows and becomes as entertaining and useful as Twitter was prior to Musk's takeover. Imagine I won't close my Twitter profile as it will be useful to check in here and there.
Imagine that all left wing people join Twitter*, and all right wing people stay on Twitter. That would be a worse equilibrium than having everyone on the same social network, because it would increase polarization and group think.
Why not?
Facebook and google have been caught to manipulate their search algorithm, any exodus from these platforms? You block the endless stream of fake models following you, Mute musk and you still get the best news feed.
Maybe things are different on your side of the Atlantic, but German twitter has gotten much better, maybe because twitter does not enforce the German censorship laws as it did before. I do not trust any fact checkers, tone police and that is exactly what we had before Musk. Perhaps there are more bullshit post, but community notes are the best thing that has happened to twitter. We had massive fake news from various outlets, including tax funded state media. Community notes with its option to cite sources has leveled the playing field.
I do not need a state to tell me what and whom I can read or who are the scientists in charge of dispersing the truth. If you fear that we lose common ground regarding basic facts we can agree on, activist editors, journalists and scientists are the much bigger danger.
Because I like to learn. Because I'm not afraid of speech. Because I don't want to wall myself off inside a monoculture of same thought. Because it's global and interesting. Because I'm free to engage or not engage. Because I don't have to read or follow accounts I don't want to read or follow. So many reasons…
I am not a philosopher, but I wanted to mention one reason for staying on Twitter that has not yet been mentioned: to engage with people in other languages than English and with people who do not live in North America. Much of my intellectual life occurs in Spanish with scholars, writers, journalists, and others in Spain. There, alternatives to Twitter are only very slowly catching on. The bulk of the conversation, debate, and information-spreading still takes place on Twitter. So, it is important for me professionally, intellectually, and personally to stay on Twitter as long as it remains the dominant platform in my small subset of the academic, journalistic, and cultural world. I imagine the same is true for people working in French, German, Italian, Arabic, Japanese, Portuguese, etc.
The latest data I've seen* suggest that Twitter's American political makeup is at present something like 48% Democratic and 47% GOP. That's not far off from proportions within the United States itself: useful for anyone hoping to broadly understand what's going on over there.
As for me, my friends are still on Twitter, and it's by far the best place to discuss my areas of teaching and research.
*this was on CNN just the other day:
"Look at this. The party ID among those who regularly use X/Twitter for news. Back in 2022, 65% of those who regularly used Twitter/X for news were Democrats. Just 31% were Republicans… Look at where we are today. Just a completely different picture. Now it's basically split between Democrats at 48%, Republicans at 47%… Now, this new overall makeup, matches the overall electorate far better."
I don’t entirely understand the bubble-avoidance justification. What’s the problem with a bubble if you know it’s a bubble? You discount the views somewhat perhaps and check specific alternatives out if you feel the need to, without letting the deluge of madness washing all over you. I prefer to talk to people I like. If I happen to come across people I don’t like or disagree with, that’s fine, too (occasionally), but why should I seek them out actively (unless for research, because being in politics or seeking popularity and spreading the word)? On the other side, in addition to what goes on on twitter stands the fact that every twitter user makes Musk richer (and, of course, every Tesla buyer and so on). So that seems like two good reasons against stay versus one questionable reason for stay (bubble-avoidance) and another perhaps less questionable (keeping in touch with friends and family). Regarding this latter, though, I left social media long ago and I don’t find it difficult to keep in touch with friends and family (which makes sense since this is what we did before social media became a thing). There are other ways to do it, perhaps less intensive and involving, but that does not seem like a problem to me.
For now I’m staying because I find it interesting to see how identical posts are received on either site. Maybe I’ve been in a social science department for too long, yes.
I don't think there are any good reasons to leave it (or at least no good reasons that didn't already exist before Musk took over).
"But now Twitter is owned by a right-wing bigot"
– Maybe this is true, maybe it isn't, but if it matters to you who owns the platform, just look up who the major shareholders before Musk's ownership were… (spoiler: among others, a Saudi prince, whose views you'll probably disagree with even more strongly)
"But before the takeover the owners didn't engage politically whereas Musk constantly spouts right-wing conspiracy theories on his supposedly neutral platform"
– Just because Musk is the owner, I don't see a reason why he shouldn't be entitled to voice his personal opinion. If you don't like it, just block or mute him.
"But a study has shown that since Musk's endorsement of Trump, his content and other right-wing content receive an artificial boost"
– As others have pointed out, the study has major flaws such as not accounting for the effect of the attempted Trump assassination (and to the credit of the authors, they don't draw overly strong conclusions from their findings). Also, the study has not undergone peer review yet (though that in itself is not a good argument to dismiss their findings, of course). In any case, if it's a problem for you that someone is tampering with the algorithm, it seems this was much more the case *before* Musk's ownership. Whatever your conclusions from the "Twitter Files", it's safe to say that twitter's previous management intervened to a greater extent that Musk.
"But now there's much more right-wing garbage on Twitter since Musk took over"
– This is certainly true, but this is understandable given Andrew Bailey's point that a larger percentage of Twitter's users now side with the Republicans than previously. But still, if you see right-wing stuff you don't want to see, just block or mute. And in rare cases you may even want to engage with it and show why you disagree – I personally changed my mind quite a few times because someone was willing to engage with and debunk content that I originally agreed with.
But what are some positive reasons for a philosopher to stay on Twitter? I mostly follow philosophers and scientists, and their content is definitely useful – it's a way to keep up with new research I may be interested in. And some philosophers and scientists regularly offer interesting perspectives on other topics as well (e.g., Mala Chatterjee, Agnes Callard, and, of course, Brian Leiter, among many others), or are genuinely funny (e.g., Scott Shapiro). So I think if you manage to tailor your Twitter feed to your interests by following the right accounts and blocking stuff you are definitely not interested in, Twitter / X can still have some value.
IANAP, but I want to contribute my perspective on the right-wing lunacy now engulfing Twitter: *I don't see it*. At all. I've heard people say that their replies are full of Trump/Musk boosters, climate change deniers and goodness knows what else – and their feeds are even worse. I sympathise, but that just isn't my experience. (I stay away from the "For You" tab – which is engineered for 'engagement', i.e. to annoy you – but when I do look at it about 3/4 of what's there is on my "Following" feed anyway.) Perhaps I'm just too small a fish (~1000 followers) for the algorithm to bother with.
As for the positive reasons for staying on Twitter, like a lot of people who value independent thought[1] I've developed some very, very minoritarian positions over the years, some of which I literally only voice behind closed doors. There are others which, while I wouldn't express them in politically mixed company, I know are quite widely shared on the Left – propositions like "Jeremy Corbyn is a moderate social democrat" and "Israel is committing genocide". Twitter – with the group of friends and acquaintances I've built up, people I'm following and who follow me – is much more of a safe space for views like that than I currently find Bluesky to be, which is ironic considering what everyone else is saying about the two platforms.
So yes, network effects; as the first commenter said, "the whole point of a social network is that that's where other people are", and the ravening Marxist fanatics[2] I call my people aren't yet on Bluesky in any number.
[1] Which sounds pompous – I initially wrote "who value independent thought over group loyalty", which is even worse – but I'm not bragging, just trying to describe a mindset (and one I don't think is necessarily a good thing). Put it another way: people who spend a lot of time not only on their own but inside their heads are likely to develop views that a lot of other people don't share.
[2] Obviously (?) I don't consider them to be ravening fanatics; they aren't all Marxists, either. But YKWIM.
I'm interested in gender/sex psychology, biology, and philosophy. Mainstream views of eminent philosophers like Alex Byrne and Tomas Bogardus (like "woman = adult human female"), and indeed consensus views of biologists and endocrinologists (like "sex is binary and determined by gametes") are being censored/deleted for "hateful conduct", both on pre-Musk Twitter and presently on other platforms. I follow scholars in those fields on X but I don't have an X account.
I also appreciate Bailey's reasons. From a sociological perspective, I don't consider the increase in right-wing content to be negative (yet), but more of a correction of previous censorship. I would love to see more *good* content, and that would for me mean that it would mostly be "left-leaning", but I don't consider the mere fact that a view is left-leaning good, nor the fact that there are more bad lefties than bad righties on X. I'm also one of those who believes that intellectual incest breeds retarded ideas, so I'm somewhat happy that Twitter's systematic intellectual inbreeding was disrupted.
Not a philosopher, but I'm staying in X as well as using Bluesky.
One good reason for staying in X. Dissidents all over the world use X. I just ran into a Cuban dissident in X speaking of political prisoners in Cuban jails who are being tortured and denied basic human rights.
I have the space on my phone and computer to use both X and Blue Sky, but does a dissident in Cuba or Iran or Yemen or a Palestinian in Gaza have space on their phone for another app? What kind of phone do you imagine that a dissident in Cuba or a Palestinian in Gaza has?
Cuban dissidents: https://x.com/docubprisiones/status/1857499420423581788
I'm slightly amused by those who profess bafflement at why one would leave X. No one is "afraid of speech" (this is childish), and some of us are not there to exchange political views. Here's a reason to leave: Elon Musk is a disgusting reactionary reprobate, and I don't want to be associated with his enterprise. Full stop. The platform is also worse since he took over, I assume because of moderation and algorithm choices, but that's more minor.
—–
KEYWORDS:
Primary Blog
Leave a Reply