Should the media leave social network X (formerly Twitter) or stay there? The question would have seemed far-fetched a few years ago, but the dilemma is now agitating many editorial staff, particularly since the election of Donald Trump on November 5, two years after the purchase of the microblogging platform by billionaire Elon Musk.
In recent months, the CEO of Space X and Tesla and current owner of X, has invested in the American presidential campaign, transforming himself into a propaganda machine on his own platform. The fact that the tycoon was appointed by Mr. Trump on Tuesday, November 12, to head a “government efficiency” department, responsible for slashing federal spending, was the last straw for some media.
The day after this announcement, the British daily The Guardian to the 10.8 million subscribers on “toxic and [que] its owner (…) [avait] was able to use his influence to shape political discourse” during the presidential campaign. In the process, on Thursday November 14, the Swedish newspaper Today's News and the Spanish daily The Vanguard did the same, before the French regional press groups Ouest-France and Sud Ouest followed suit the following week. All leave their journalists free to use the network as a monitoring tool.
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“It has become a lawless zone because of the lack of moderation”justifies the president of the management board of Ouest-France, François-Xavier Lefranc. “Our voice had become inaudible in this messechoes his colleague Nicolas Sterckx, the general director of Sud Ouest. It was like fighting against a tsunami of false information.” A strategic choice “ethical” facilitated by the fact that only 0.1% of traffic to the Sud Ouest newspaper site came from X.
The young environmentalist media Vert has chosen to draw a line under its nearly 18,000 subscribers on the platform « par engagement », explains Juliette Quef, its president, even if she concedes that Vert was in “not very dependent”compared to its 200,000 subscribers on Instagram and its newsletter sent to 90,000 people.
“The answer is not obvious”
The decision to slam the door is, however, far from unanimous in France. Among the media managements interviewed, several remember that the announcement of the departure of extracts from broadcasts on their own account.
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