At time of writing, outlets like BBC News have reported that over 100 Reddit communities have blocked users from posting links to X in a protest to Musk.
The Guardian leaves X: “It is a danger to democracy”. Media revolt against Elon Musk
The initiative follows 24 hours after the denunciation of X by nine French newspapers, sites and magazines who accuse the social network of exploiting their contents without any financial recognition.
LONDON – The Guardian leaves X. The British newspaper has decided to abandon the social media site owned by Elon Musk due to its "negative, offensive and dangerous for democracy" content. In all, 80 profiles linked to the Guardian, with a total of 27 million followers, will no longer publish on the ex-Twitter.
We wanted to let readers know that we will no longer post on any official Guardian editorial accounts on the social media site X (formerly Twitter). We think that the benefits of being on X are now outweighed by the negatives and that resources could be better used promoting our journalism elsewhere.
This is something we have been considering for a while given the often disturbing content promoted or found on the platform, including far-right conspiracy theories and racism. The US presidential election campaign served only to underline what we have considered for a long time: that X is a toxic media platform and that its owner, Elon Musk, has been able to use its influence to shape political discourse.
X users will still be able to share our articles, and the nature of live news reporting means we will still occasionally embed content from X within our article pages.
Our reporters will also be able to carry on using the site for news-gathering purposes, just as they use other social networks in which we do not officially engage.
Social media can be an important tool for news organisations and help us to reach new audiences but, at this point, X now plays a diminished role in promoting our work. Our journalism is available and open to all on our website and we would prefer people to come to theguardian.com and support our work there.
Thankfully, we can do this because our business model does not rely on viral content tailored to the whims of the social media giants’ algorithms – instead we’re funded directly by our readers.
