“Why Guardian don’t post on X anymore.” In a short article published Wednesday, November 13, the Guardiana British daily with 10.8 million subscribers on X (formerly Twitter), announced that it was leaving the social network, owned by Elon Musk.
“We believe that the benefits of remaining on X are now outweighed by the disadvantages, and that our resources could be better used promoting our journalism elsewhere”explains the newspaper. The American presidential campaign was the trigger for this decision, which had been considered for a long time, he adds: “X is a toxic platform and its owner, Elon Musk, has used it to influence public debate. »
If it stops using it, the daily does not seem, for the moment, to have decided to permanently close its X account. It has also not commented on the possibility, for its journalists, of continuing to post on the network individually. “Our journalists will, however, continue to use this site to collect information, in the same way as they use other social networks on which the Guardian is not officially present”nevertheless specifies the article.
The Guardian also has 8.9 million subscribers on Facebook, 5.8 million subscribers on Instagram, 2.3 million on YouTube and 19,000 on Mastodon, a platform whose approach is similar to that of X.
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Distrust of the media
The British daily is far from being the first media to make such a decision. Before him, other titles, such as the Swedish public radio Sveriges Radio or the American media NPR and PBS, chose to distance themselves from the platform and stop publishing. Since April 12, 2023, the official NPR radio account has displayed a message explaining to readers how to continue to follow his work outside of Elon Musk's platform. At the time, while the billionaire had not yet openly revealed his pro-Trump positions, it was to protest against new rules for labeling media accounts on the social network.
The owner of Tesla, SpaceX and X, has never hidden his animosity towards the media world. As early as 2018, unhappy with the treatment reserved for his electric car company after the publication of an investigation, he raised the idea of launching a rating service for media and journalists.
This distrust has greatly increased since he became boss of the social network: slowdown in the display of certain sites (notably that of the New York Times), modification of the way links pointing to press sites are displayed, automatic response to media by an email with a simple emoji (????), obsessive publication of messages claiming that traditional media “lie” to the public… This Wednesday again, in response to an X account rejoicing at the drop in audiences for certain American television channels since the election of Donald Trump, Elon Musk replied: “You are the media now. »
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