I’ve written a letter to Keir Starmer about social media algorithms and Elon Musk, and the so-called “Exodus from ‘X'”.

Would you like to read it? It’s pretty good, I think.

It follows on from a previous letter that I wrote back in July, after Labour won the general election. I sent it to Peter Kyle (he’s the Science, Innovation and Technology Secretary) and he did absolutely nothing about it.

You can read the text of that letter too; I included it in the new one.

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Kyle may have thought he didn’t have to read or respond to my letter; he may not even have seen it. But he does have a duty of service to the citizens of the UK, and if he’s not making himself accountable, he’s failing in that service.

Starmer too, if I don’t get a reply from him (or at least his office; this is not my first time around with a UK prime minister).

Here’s the letter – see what you think. I’m particularly interested in hearing from people who write and run their own political websites. Did I hit the right points? Could I hit them better? This is just an overture; I expect there will need to be a lot more letters like it. Now read on:

Dear Prime Minister,

You may be aware of the so-called ‘Exodus from X’, in which millions of people are leaving the social media platform ‘X’ – formerly Twitter – because its algorithms have been retuned since Elon Musk took it over, in order to reflect his politics (see this article for reference: https://news.sky.com/story/the-x-exodus-could-bluesky-spike-spark-end-of-elon-musks-social-media-platform-13254722)

Musk’s appointment to a position in Donald Trump’s government was the last straw for many users, who have left what has become – increasingly – a right-wing echo chamber for other platforms such as BlueSky.

This is bad in social terms because it fragments the social media on political grounds; where once Twitter was a platform for debate, this is decreasing as people leave the platform.

But it is also bad in BUSINESS terms; Musk’s tweaking of the algorithms deliberately put businesses such as commentary websites at a disadvantage if their political positions were not aligned with his – he was trying to put us out of business (full disclosure: I run a political commentary website).

You may not be aware that this has not come as a surprise to those of us who use the social media to promote our businesses; suppression of our websites has been happening for many years, despite attempts to encourage politicians to legislate against it.

In July, almost immediately after the current Labour government was elected into office, I wrote to Peter Kyle, your Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, as follows:

‘In his speech at the State Opening of Parliament, the King said, “My Government will prioritise wealth creation for all.” I am writing to request that you investigate and end a particularly pernicious form of wealth suppression that has plagued my business and others like it since at least 2020.

‘I refer to the suppression of businesses that rely on publicity on the internet and in particular via social media platforms.

‘I run a political news and commentary website called Vox Political, which takes a centre-left stance and is therefore likely to be broadly supportive of your government’s policies (although I reserve the right to be critical where I believe you deserve it). I write and publish up to six articles per day, and publicise these on platforms including Facebook, X (the former Twitter), and others.

‘Occasionally I post queries on these websites to check that people are seeing these posts and the most common response is that these queries are the first things people have seen from me in a long time – often months.

‘The reason, as far as I and other social media-reliant website owners can tell, is that these platforms use algorithms – processes or sets of rules that are followed when handling posts by users – to push links to sites like mine down users’ newsfeeds (the lists of posts they see from other users, pages or groups they have indicated they want to see) to prevent them from being seen.

‘We do not know why social media platforms do this. Perhaps they are being paid by the so-called mainstream media to suppress us and promote them. Perhaps they want us to spend money advertising our output (although, if so, they are charging far too much; a recent message from Facebook suggested that I should spend £42 to get 1,000 extra views – which is clearly an admission that views are being restricted, but 1,000 extra readers would not generate the extra revenue for my site that would cover the cost of paying for them, so it would be commercial insanity for me to spend that money).

‘Perhaps these platforms are simply run by people whose politics are right-wing, and they want our sites to fail.

‘Before these algorithms were introduced, my presence on Facebook (for example) grew rapidly, my posts were seen by tens of thousands of people at a time, and my website’s popularity approached a million hits per month. This meant I was able to earn a relatively comfortable living.

‘Now, my presence on that platform has stagnated, my posts are often seen by fewer than 100 people and my website struggles to get 1,000 hits a day.

‘That hasn’t happened because public tastes have changed; it is a result of direct interference.

‘And my site is just one of many. There are thousands – maybe tens or even hundreds of thousands – of small businesspeople like me and I have no doubt that many, most or all of them have been penalised in the same way – by monopolies that are abusing their power over us (in my opinion).

‘When you think of the damage to the UK economy that this could represent, the consequences may be staggering.

‘So I appeal to you: will you please launch an investigation into what is happening to businesses like mine, why it is happening, and how we can be freed to return to profit again? And will you then take the appropriate steps to free the online economy to make the potentially huge contribution to the UK’s prosperity that it should?

‘I am willing to provide further information and assistance if needed, and I am sure my colleagues who suffer similar suppression will also be happy to do the same.’

I have not received a reply.

While I accept that a new government may be spectacularly busy, as a UK elector, I am entitled to expect a certain standard of service from my government. This standard has not been met.

So I am writing to inquire as to why my correspondence was ignored and – now I have brought this issue to your attention – when action will be taken to stop the social media platforms from suppressing my business (and others).

If I do not receive a response within a decent amount of time (I understand the usual practice is 21 days), my next stop will be to contact the news media.

I expect I’ll need to get in touch with those TV/radio/newspaper guys pretty soon. If you’d like to recommend a particular journalist, please do.

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