New York politicians are looking for a new social media home

Twitter – once an essential social media platform for New York politicos and their followers – is in a tailspin. Under new owner Elon Musk, Twitter has not only thinned its ranks, eliminating many of the engineers who kept it running, but announced puzzling new policies. Most recently, Twitter temporarily limited how many tweets a user can read in one day.

The changes at Twitter have been confusing and frustrating, including for some of New York’s elected officials, who by and large have come to maintain some sort of presence on Twitter. As New York City Council Member Sandy Nurse asked after Twitter’s rate limit move, “Does Elon want us to leave?”

Though it’s famously “not real life,” Twitter is where politicians spend some of the precious time in their real lives, as do the journalists and constituents who follow them. Providing lawmakers a less formal and more immediate means of communicating, Twitter is where some of the earliest calls for former Gov. Andrew Cuomo to resign rolled in and then quickly snowballed. It’s where state Sen. Zellnor Myrie shared photos of being pepper-sprayed by cops during a Black Lives Matter protest in 2020. What’s shared on Twitter has also driven news. Would then-incoming Mayor Eric Adams have gone through the hassle of converting his first three paychecks into cryptocurrency if he hadn’t tweeted about it in a friendly competition with the mayor of Miami?

But Twitter’s stock is falling, both literally and figuratively, and a flurry of exciting social media platforms have cropped up or grown in popularity as potential alternatives. There’s Spill, founded by former Twitter employees and aimed at centering Black users, LGBTQ+ users and other marginalized groups. There’s Jack Dorsey-backed Bluesky, decentralized Mastodon, and Mark Zuckerberg’s shameless – though promised to be more “sanely run” – Twitter ripoff, Threads.

Some of us have held off on signing up for these alternatives, in the possibly futile hope that the answer to what will replace Twitter isn’t half a dozen more platforms that could eventually flicker out. 

But some New York politicians have recently started to expand their social media presences, previewing a potential shift away from what has at times been a helpful tool for political candidates to get their message out and for elected officials to communicate with their constituents.

For Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine, who frequently tweets public service-oriented information like updates on air quality, Twitter was essential, if not always perfect. That was especially true during the COVID-19 pandemic, when he was a City Council member and chair of the body’s health committee. “It entirely changed the way I did my job and gave me a way to push out information in real time and learn from others and dialogue with people who knew more than me,” he said.

But that all changed in the last six months. The platform has become much less useful, Levine said, as more content comes from “trolls and spammers” and functionality falls by the wayside. “I have been desperate to find an alternative to Twitter,” he said. 

Some of the younger, more progressive and technologically adventurous politicians have already started shifting away from Twitter, putting their focus on other apps. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has long turned to Instagram Lives to talk frankly and at length to her constituents and farther-flung fans. Gen Z Council Member Chi Ossé has favored TikTok and Instagram. “I think I’ve been moving away from Twitter for some time,” Ossé said, noting that the platform was “a cesspool” before Musk too, but that it’s gotten worse under new ownership. “I think that using video content through the algorithms that exist – most especially on TikTok – allows for more access to organize, to mobilize, and to also uplift ideas and, in my case, bills that I introduce.”

Younger progressives have also been among the early adopters to Twitter alternatives. Ocasio-Cortez can be found on Bluesky, as can fellow socialists Rep. Jamaal Bowman and Assembly Member Zohran Mamdani. Council Member Tiffany Cabán’s communications director said that she also has a Bluesky account but doesn’t use it much. But Cabán’s team has been using Twitter a lot less in favor of Instagram. Why? “Twitter is overrun with far right trolls,” he said.

A few days before announcing his intention to run in New York’s 17th Congressional District next year, former Rep. Mondaire Jones directed his Twitter followers to his Bluesky profile. “Now’s a good week to follow me on the other platform,” he wrote.

But it’s not just younger lawmakers or progressives rebelling against Musk’s politics who are getting into some of the Twitter alternatives. Rep. Brian Higgins and Assembly Members Pat Fahy, Jeffrey Dinowitz and John McDonald were all on Threads by Thursday. (So far, it does appear to be a lot of Democrats, though.)

Even Gov. Kathy Hochul is, as reporter Jon Campbell put it, Threading. 

Of course, joining another social media platform doesn’t necessarily mean a shift away from Twitter. While some lawmakers have characterized it as such, others appear to be looking at the new platforms as yet another place where they can get their message across. “We are fighting to defeat George Santos on all platforms. Join me on Threads,” Anna Kaplan, a former state senator now running for the 3rd congressional district, wrote on Twitter recently. 

Some of the former are hopeful that a shift away from Twitter will become permanent, though. “I think many of us have sort of felt trapped on Twitter,” Levine said. “We’ve just been holding our breath until an alternative emerged that we could have a consensus on that we all move to en masse.” 

Levine, who joined Threads late Wednesday night, is hopeful about the recent enthusiasm around that platform. He advised me – as someone else who is holding their breath for consensus on an alternative – to bite the bullet and join Threads. “I think that when news starts being broken on Threads, when viral messages and memes start to emerge from Threads, then I think reporters are going to start to see it differently,” Levine said. 

But with few, if any, lawmakers completely signing off Twitter just yet, the fledgling and frustrating legacy platform may still be essential following in New York politics.

Of course, the internet and social media should be only part of a politician’s communications and outreach strategy. “While social media platforms have become extremely important in political life, nothing can fully replace traditional in-real-life campaigning,” Nurse wrote in a text.

Lupe Todd-Medina, a Democratic political consultant, said that different social media platforms have distinct roles to play in a campaign. Instagram is great for showing photos of your candidate pounding the pavement, and LinkedIn is helpful for reaching potential donors. While Todd-Medina said she didn't see candidates leaving Twitter in the last election cycle, candidates have expanded the platforms they use and even returned to some out of fashion ones, like Facebook. “Older people, who are the prime voter, tend to all have a Facebook account,” Todd-Medina noted.

If going back to Facebook isn’t enough of a throwback, Council Member Justin Brannan – a Twitter power user – has another idea in mind. “I’m going back to rotary phones, postcards, and stamps,” he wrote in a text.

Editor’s note: Lupe Todd-Medina is a member of City & State’s advisory board.