Inside the health ministry’s controversial Twitter exit
Friday, 11 July 2025
The Ministry of Health intended to cease posting on Twitter/X, and move its focus over to burgeoning platform BlueSky, due to “significantly decreased” engagement and “abusive and extreme content”, documents released to The Post show.
And it had prepared for the backlash for months, crafting “reactive lines” and collating examples of offensive messages to counter claims the move was politically motivated.
The Ministry announced in May that it would be “reducing” its presence on the Elon Musk-owned platform, where it has over 48,000 followers.
It took the Minister of Health, Simeon Brown, by surprise and the move was ultimately watered down. The director-general of Health later overruled the decision and decided the Ministry would maintain a presence, but would reduce its posts, said a ministry spokesperson.
The Post requested information about the move under the Official Information Act.
In June the Ministry decided to withhold the information due to its impending public release, after questions from The Post, saying it planned to release the information on its website on July 18.
It ultimately released the information to The Post at midday Friday, though instated an embargo that prevented publication until 4pm - unusual for an official information release.
Included in the tranche of information was a memorandum addressed to the Ministry’s Operational Leadership Team in March, which noted there may be criticism about the move away from X “including for a perceived political motivation”.
The Ministry said it had prepared “reactive lines for any potential questions”.
There were also references to the level of abuse on X directed at the Ministry, noting that by continuing to be active on the site, “the Ministry could be perceived to be putting its audiences and staff at risk of online abuse, while not tackling the spread of mis-and/or disinformation”.
It was also “labour intensive” to moderate the Ministry’s X account.
“Stopping actively using X will not necessarily prevent X users from sending abusive comments to the Ministry’s X account, however we can continue to monitor X, reactively respond to questions there, and can resume posting at any time.”
The Ministry supplied a long list of negative messages it had received on X after announcing the shift to BlueSky. This document was prepared by the Ministry and sent to senior staff internally.
Some of the messages referenced former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and policies enacted during the Covid-19 pandemic - such as saying the Ministry had been “pushing the jabs”, in reference to vaccinations.
There were also several messages that appeared to be in relation to the issue of puberty blockers, accusing the Ministry of being “trans maniacs”, and labelling the Ministry as being for “pedos and perverts”.
Others alleged political reasons for the move away from X, including due to its current owner, Elon Musk.
“The sentiment has been largely negative. The majority of the content seems to be coming from accounts outside of New Zealand,” a Ministry document said.
“One thing to note with the negative reaction on Twitter – while some people were genuinely (if abusively) criticising the Ministry for the announcement, …abusive commentary ranged over topics including vaccination, the COVID-19 response, puberty blockers or anti-transgender sentiment, and similar topics.
“That is to say, many people were taking the opportunity to criticise the Ministry more broadly.”
In response to an email with the subject line “example of content”, deputy director-general Celia Wellington responded with “very sad and vile”, with a sad-face emoji.
Internal emails included in the Ministry’s official information release showed consideration was “seriously” given to leaving X back in mid-March. “Do you know if other agencies are giving this active consideration?” asked a communication and engagement staff member.
“I can test this at the smaller agencies meeting next week,” another staff member replied.
A few days later, the memorandum was drafted, with a staffer asking for “a couple of slides” to be included in a powerpoint showing “the awful stuff” on X.
Examples included a message labelling the Ministry a “death cult”.
Posts about the announcement on BlueSky were also included. “The general tone is not abusive,” the Ministry document said. “This is generally indicative of the type of discussion held on BlueSky.”
First launched in 2024, BlueSky was established by the co-founder of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, as an alternative micro-blogging site.
The Ministry’s memo described BlueSky as “one of the fastest growing social media sites, particularly within academic and scientific communities”, including in New Zealand.
Six weeks since the Ministry of Health announced its move onto BlueSky, it has just 1300 followers on the social media network.
It noted that other agencies had stopped posting to X, along with “major news outlets” (TVNZ was also criticised for its decision to leave the site in late 2024).
While BlueSky experienced a surge in users toward the end of 2024, around the US presidential election, it still has significantly fewer global users than X - about 37 million compared with about 600 million (though that figure, from Musk directly, has not been verified).
By comparison, the Facebook-owned Threads site, which also has similarities with X, has 320 million users. The Ministry of Health maintains an account there but has never posted and has just four followers.
Health Minister Simeon Brown, in a statement to The Post, reiterated his earlier comments that it made “no sense” for the Ministry not to use X to reach its 48,000 followers.
“I’m pleased the Ministry of Health has decided to continue to engage with New Zealanders on X as part of a wide range of social media platforms they use,” he said.
In a statement, the Ministry of Health said social media played a “critical role in how government agencies engage with the public, share timely information, and ensure accessibility to services and updates”.