TechScape: Inside the rise and fall of Politics For All

If you want to understand how a group of teenagers with no journalistic experience created one of the most influential political social media accounts in the UK, then ask Travis Wright. The 18-year-old spent most of last year helping to build Politics For All which, before it was banned by Twitter last week, gained 100,000s of followers including cabinet ministers, celebrities, and sports stars.

By day he was studying multimedia journalism at a sixth form college in rural Suffolk but when lessons finished he was writing breaking news tweets that were being shared by cabinet ministers and Match of the Day host Gary Lineker.

Climbing the social ladder

Following a few early viral tweets, the account began to pick up momentum in early 2021. By the end of the year it had 450,000 followers and far more interactions than many mainstream news accounts. Its tweets were getting more than 80m views a month.

Wright was eventually asked to leave the service in the autumn. Shortly afterwards the account made some messy attempts at original reporting, including tweeting insider documents from the Salisbury rail crash without appropriate context.

Kept in the dark

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