The most followed community in France with 2.2 million subscribers, the City of Paris announced Thursday that it would leave X on January 20, the day of Donald Trump's inauguration in the United States. “The growing toxicity of X prevents any balanced and calm public debate,” declared Paris’ first deputy Patrick Bloche.
“Threat” to democracy
“Since the purchase of the platform by Elon Musk, the lying, hateful, racist, revisionist comments that are spreading on , denouncing a network “which refuses to apply European control rules”. “Faced with massive disinformation, harassment, violence, suspicions of foreign interference… The social network Menard (PS).
Since the election of Donald Trump, the libertarian billionaire and boss of
Like many NGOs, unions or scientific institutions, many communities are responding to the HelloQuitteX movement, created in November, which calls for people to collectively leave X on January 20.
« Manipulation »
“After January 20, de facto, Elon Musk will no longer be held accountable to justice. X […] will then be more dangerous than ever for the mental health of its users and for democracy,” explains the website of the movement, designed to facilitate the “digital move” of X users to the BlueSky and Mastodon platforms.
-“After January 20, de facto, Elon Musk will no longer be held accountable to justice”
David Colon, specialist in the history of propaganda, sees in these highly publicized departures “a beautiful moral posture”. According to him, there “does not exist a sovereign European social network, whose data is stored in Europe and not based on an advertising model that predatory data, for the purposes of manipulating behavior”.
The mathematician and research director at CNRS David Chavalarias, one of the initiators of HelloQuitteX, explains that in certain X threads, “the algorithm brings up the most insulting, the most controversial content […] We receive content from the American extreme right without having asked for anything.”
No general trend
Departure procedures vary: Brittany's X account will remain open to prevent identity theft, but will be inactive. In Tours, the use of X will be restricted to “exceptional needs” such as “crisis communication”.
Related News :