The British daily The Guardian, West FranceGreenpeace France… In mid-November, a first salvo of media and institutions highlighting their desire to leave X (formerly Twitter).
Far from drying up over time, this flood of departures from the platform bought by Elon Musk in 2022 has gained momentum as the inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump in the United States approaches on January 20. A date which will also mark the arrival of the owner of X at the head of a “Department of Government Efficiency”.
In France, Sandrine Rousseau joined the movement on Sunday January 12. Using the formula of the writer Virginie Despentes, “We get up, we get out of there!” “, the MP announced that she was leaving the social network and called on the members of the New Popular Front to do the same “collectively”.
Possible departure of NFP deputies
“X has become a veritable disinformation machine” et “the sounding board for far-right currents”castigated the elected environmentalist in a letter addressed to the 191 other NFP deputies, and published on X.
His proposal received a favorable response from Environmentalists. Marine Tondelier, national secretary of the party, launched the same appeal on Sunday. “We all need to get off Twitter”insisted the elected representative of Hénin-Beaumont in the program Le Grand Jury broadcast on RTL, before calling for ” to forbid “ this social network in Europe.
A few days earlier, Yannick Jadot had already announced that he had decided to leave the platform on the day of Donald Trump's inauguration. “I refuse to use a social network which has become the instrument of massive propaganda in the service of an extreme right, racist, homophobic, sexist, climate skeptic”detailed the environmentalist senator from Paris in a message posted on X.
On the socialist side, Olivier Faure admitted on Sunday that he “ask the question of leaving” on the set of BFMTV. “What bothers me is that if we leave the social network and leave it only to the extreme right and people of good faith continue to believe that that's where it's happening, they no longer have an alternative word »underlined the national secretary of the PS, also calling for a coordinated departure from the platform.
LFI deputy Éric Coquerel told LCI that he was deciding “for now” to stay on “real problem”linked more generally to a “ongoing far-rightization of political or media spaces around the world”.
The escape is organized
Politicians are not the only ones to question their presence on X. After West France On November 19, many French media also announced their departure from the platform. The Sud Ouest group and the ecological media Vert have no longer published on this social network since November 20, and the scientific information site The Conversation since November 22. For their part, Mediapart and the magazine Economic alternatives decided to leave X on January 20.
In higher education, the first departure of X dates back to August 2023. The University of Rennes launched this movement, followed by several other establishments. Recently, the University of Paris-Est-Créteil announced that it would leave the platform on December 16, and that of Paris-Saclay on the 19th. The Polytechnic school did the same on January 10.
To support this movement, which has also spread to hospitals and many public institutions, academics, associations and Internet users have launched the “HelloQuitteX” initiative. The objective? Organize the coordinated migration of users from X to other platforms «compatible with functional democracies”including Mastodon and BlueSky. Here too, the departure date was set for January 20, the day Donald Trump returned to power in the United States.
