The Guardian UK Exits Elon Musk’s X, Says Platform Promoting Racism

Emmanuel Addeh in Abuja

The Guardian UK yesterday exited Elon Musk’s X, formerly Twitter, stressing that the platform was becoming extremely toxic and was promoting racism and far-right conspiracies.

In a statement, the respected news medium said it will stop posting from its official editorial accounts on the platform, but noted that X users can still share its articles.

“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,” the newspaper stated.

However, it stressed that X users will still be able to share its articles, and the nature of live news reporting will mean that it will still occasionally embed content from X within its 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,” it added.

Elon Musk, the owner of Twitter supported Donald Trump during the last presidential poll in the US and is strongly believed to have used the platform to influence voters in favour of the eventual winner, Trump.