If you want to get official updates on the investigation into Nancy Guthrie's disappearance, perhaps the quickest place to find them is the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, now called X.
The Pima County Sheriff's Department has been posting official announcements there, as has the FBI — the two key investigative agencies.
Arizona Daily Star columnist Tim Steller
That's not surprising — it's common for government agencies to operate X accounts, long after owner Elon Musk rebranded it from Twittter and changed how it operates. State of Arizona agencies also have many accounts on the platform, as do local governments.
Still, it's too bad.
Under Musk's ownership, X has acted as if it is above the law around the world while Musk has promoted divisive and racist social commentary. Throughout January, he posted in support of the idea that there is a threat of "white genocide" and similar racial concepts on 26 of the month's 31 days.
Despite Musk's claims to be a free-speech absolutist, his platform has repeatedly throttled the posts of people who criticized him, slashing their reach, the New York Times found last year. Ari Cohn, lead counsel for tech policy at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, said Musk's position on free speech was never consistent.
"We've seen everything from banning users who say things he doesn't like, to reducing the algorithmic reach of certain posts and even (suppressing) links," Cohn said.
Worst of all, in December and January, the platform's AI chatbot, Grok, began producing millions of images in which real-life women and children were shown as if they were naked or scantily clad.
These were "nudified" versions of real images. To make them, users give the AI program a photo and ask it to undress the people in the photo, or put them in a bikini, or that sort of thing.
The platform formerly known as Twitter is allowing nude pictures of children to be made with its AI tool. It's time for Arizona's government and police agencies to dump this anti-social platform.
In the 11 days from Dec. 29 to Jan. 8, Grok produced around 23,000 sexualized images of children, or one every 41 seconds, the Center for Countering Digital Hate estimated. This was out of a total of around 3 million sexualized images produced during that period, after which the company restricted the feature to be available for paid subscribers only.
A global backlash followed, with governments around the world launching investigations and regulatory actions against xAI, the parent company of both the social media platform and the AI chatbot, as a result. In France, investigators raided the company's Paris offices; in Brazil, the federal government has given Grok until Feb. 18 to stop producing sexual content.
In the United States, where Musk has been a close ally of the Trump administration, there have been no such regulatory moves.
State agencies, politicians
For many Arizona government agencies and politicians, though, it's business-as-usual on X. I started counting state government departments' accounts on the platform, but I stopped at 12, all of which were active and posting in February.
It's interesting there has been no change to this while a Democrat, Katie Hobbs, has been governor. While the federal government under Trump has used X loyally, some Democrat-run governments have not.
Pima County, for example, dropped X and replaced it with Threads. That's the similar platform operated by Meta, which also owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.
It wasn't an overtly political decision by the county government, which is overseen by a board of supervisors with four Democrats and one Republican, as county communications director Mark Evans explained by email.
"X/Twitter had long been a difficult SM (social media) environment for us since the 2020 election and Covid. There was a firehose of misinformation poured onto our posts about both topics that was difficult to keep up with and respond to. His (Musk's) acquisition didn’t change the volume of the firehose. We’d adapted to that environment since Twitter/X was our only choice."
"Once Threads launched, we had a choice of microblogging services, and we didn’t see the value in paying the monthly fee to remain on X to ensure our content was shared broadly. There was a lot of chatter at the time about former blue check (verified) accounts seeing their content throttled by X as a sort of punishment for not paying the fee. So we voted with our feet and went to another provider."
Threads is the biggest competitor to X, but there have been many other efforts to compete. My preferred option is Bluesky, which is similar to X in function, but without the single mercurial billionaire controlling it, or a mega-corporation like Meta. It is an open-source network, not controlled by a singled company, that doesn't suppress links to outside content the way most of the other platforms do, and allows users to adjust their own algorithms and communities.
The only problem is that Bluesky, with somewhere above 40 million total users, is comparatively small, meaning it doesn't have the same "network effect" of being on a platform with more than 100 million monthly users.
X's audience
The audience is what keeps politicians, even Democrats, on X. They include Tucson's progressive new member of Congress, Rep. Adelita Grijalva.
A spokesperson for Grijalva said via text: "Although we strongly object to Elon Musk's conduct and the values he's espoused, the reality is that X remains a widely used platform by members of the media and the public. We are committed to meeting our constituents where they are."
That's similar to what a spokesperson for Democratic U.S. Sen Ruben Gallego texted me: "Senator Gallego believes in meeting Arizonans wherever they are: in person, or on Facebook, YouTube, Bluesky, X, Instagram or TikTok."
And a spokesman for U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly, the Tucson Democrat, said much the same: "A lot of Arizonans are on X and Sen. Kelly has the same approach online and in person: try to meet Arizonans where they are to be as accessible as possible. He has made his views about Elon Musk and this administration clear, including on X."
As if to emphasize the point, Democratic Rep. Alma Hernandez made a post Sunday about the irresponsible YouTubers who are spreading gossip about the Nancy Guthrie case, attracting viewers by inventing suspects and smearing their names. Hours later, she was being interviewed on CNN.
The power to change
But the users are not passive actors in this industry. Everybody who uses social media affects the platforms by deciding where and how to post and participate.
I dropped X a couple of years ago when I saw it was headed downhill under Musk's leadership. I've stuck largely to Bluesky and Facebook, even though I can't stand how commercialized and rife with AI fakes Facebook has become.
If any of these prominent people — Grijalva, Kelly, Gallego— were to drop X the way Pima County did, users would follow them wherever they go.
"We live in a very dynamic market for this stuff, and it really does have the capacity to change," Cohn said. "I don't think hand-wringing about how no other platform could ever be successful is either helpful or true, and users have a lot to do with it. If enough users want to change things, things will change."
Indeed. Threads went from new in July 2023 to possibly bigger than X now. Friendster and MySpace, two of the pioneering social-media platforms, died off when Facebook took over.
Although it's understandable why people, even left-leaning people, would stay on X, I think Musk has proven himself unworthy of the benefits we give him by being there, especially when there are so many good alternatives.
