The Guardian has announced that they will no longer cite Twitter.
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.
Exactly right. Musk has destroyed the utility of the social media site he spent so much money on. You should flee the hellhole, too.
Now we just have to get the Guardian to quit putting up with transphobes…
Stephen King is leaving Twitter
Full List of Celebrities Quitting X After Elon Musk Helps Trump Win
Why Free Press Is Leaving Twitter
“Bluesky Has the Juice”: Celebrities Flee “Toxic” X for Rival Social Media Site
Spain’s La Vanguardia joins the Guardian in leaving X, citing ‘toxic content’
Overdue.
But good.
Opened Bluesky account. Closing Twitter.
I left Twitter before it even became X.
Does that make me an ‘influencer”?
Twitter was useful. X is just toxic garbage.
So far no replacement for Twitter has shown up.
This should be easy. Just copy Twitter and change the name to something like
Twitter II, Child of Twitter, Chirp, NotMuskTwitter, Classic Twitter, etc..
Maybe it will be Bluesky.
It won’t be Mastodon.
Mastodon is decentralized and doesn’t have the capacity to be a Twitter replacement.
It won’t be Threads. Wrong format and besides it is part of another toxic internet company, Facebook/Meta.
Tomorrow is my one year anniversary of my departure from Twitter.
PZ @ #7 — Congrats. I closed my Twitter account when Musk bought it. That was no big deal because I rarely opened Twitter anyway.
However, my addiction is to Facebook, and mainly Instagram reels which I view on Facebook. Although I feel like I should drop it for various reasons, I’m loathe to do so because that’s where I connect with a handful of my old friends…true tot he platform, a bunch of aging boomers. In a few years, we’ll all be gone.
A major Seedish newspaper just quit twitter, too.
Landmark Bridge Quits X
St Pauli become 1st major football club to leave X, claiming Elon Musk has turned site into ‘hate machine’
@11
Have a look at some St. Pauli merch
I see a shirt with “St. Pauli anti-fascist”, another with “No place for homophobia, fascism, sexism, racism”, one with “No Gods, No Master”, and many more. Enticing.
I’ve never been on Twitter, or Facebook either, so I have no clue what they’re good for. Can somebody explain to me what one can gain from using such platforms? Is there a reason I should join Bluesky?
Facebook has its uses. I probly spend too much time on it but I share news, things I’m intrested in, talk with friends, express myself, see lots of good memes, find a lot of intresting stuff, organise and learn abouyt soIcan take part invarious events including protetss and vigils , petitions and boycotts and generally enjoy myself, learn an\d share on it. I know it has its isues and sometimes it absolutely shits me but it does have its upsides and uses.
Bluesky says 1 million people signed up for the platform in last 24 hours
I abandoned my Twitter account two years ago, actually the very day Musk bought it. That jerkwad didn’t need to make money off me.
For those wondering what it was good for–well, interacting with celebrities can be cool and wasn’t happening anywhere else in my life. I got a like from David Crosby! And Sophia Bush! Also, making snide remarks to Lauren Boebert about her weenie-wagging husband was fun for a while, but the lack of challenge inherent in the exercise made it age quickly.
It could also be fun to pop in among the MAGA-Q-Conspiracy nutbombs, leave a sane comment and watch them get all up in arms with unreasonable anger and hatred. Really, it was like kicking over an anthill and watching the little beasts scurry about madly, only I didn’t feel bad about it later.
But nothing lasts forever. I’ve moved on.
So why is there a “share on X” button on the posts here? Is that a WordPress thing that can’t be changed?
At most, I’ve posted replies a handful of times on Twitter, but I did use it to follow a bunch of Ukrainian accounts posting about their ongoing struggle against Putin’s despotic regime, but in the end, I didn’t have the energy to trawl through the noxious drivel that infests Twitter’s every thread and I stopped logging in a few months ago. I won’t be back.
It’s not a WordPress thing — you can configure pages any which way you like, down to the smallest button — so it’s probably just inertia. But heck, if it continues to bring a little traffic to this saner corner of the Internet, I’m fine with that?
I had feelings about the twitter and facebook buttons too. But then I thought about posting links to those places that criticize those places and not touching them otherwise. I can’t say I’ve totally thought it out though.
The “bleeding the beast” idea, using the thing you are trying to destroy (in that case religious people using government services) is a general human thing.
There’s also the political usefulness of a bunch of people getting banned from xittter for criticism of twitter if it got enough attentio..
I got kicked off of Twitter for just saying that Trump supporters deserved to be hated.
And this was BEFORE Musk bought the damn thing.
ContractsProf Blog – This Bird Has Flown: Leaving Twitter
Sports media’s migration from X to Bluesky has accelerated post-election
Were I overly cynical, I’d venture that Musk’s purchase has served its purpose, aside from the fun playing with his toy provides.
He’s quite a bit richer now than he was then, he’s much closer to the true centers of political power, and the regulatory capture aspect is, well, off the charts.
Not a bad investment for him.
I left Twitter as soon as Musk bought it.
I’m enjoying Blue Sky, it feels more like what twitter was going to be.
I have a twitter account, have written there exactly once, when musk was having an argument with Greta Thunberg.
Unfortunately, if you’re talking about the UK mothership, that is not going to be possible without major cultural change in the UK that views trans people as human beings who deserve respect and the ability to flourish as individuals. Instead, both sides of politics there are committed to policies that are killing gender questioning youth. As for the US Guardian, they’re quite a lot better (and have openly criticised their UK version for exactly this). The Oz Guardian hasn’t been quite so forthright, nor selective in print copy from the UK which they choose to recirculate here, which is why they do not and will not have my support until they kick the transphobia to the curb.
I’ve only been on BlueSky for a couple of days but it feels like how I remember Twitter being when I enjoyed being on Twitter – which might be false memories, because there was a whole lot of horribleness long before fElon decided to blow billions of dollars turning it into a dystopian hellscape for neo-Nazis.
Xanthë@28,
While agreeing that the UK (including the Guardian) is heaving with transphobia, it’s worth noting that “both sides of politics” is a huge over-simplification of current politics in the UK, and there is significant support for trans rights on the left. For example, the Scottish Parliament passed a bill which among other provisions would have implemented gender self-identification, with support from all the Scottish Green and Liberal Democrat MSPs, majorities of the SNP and Labour, and even a few Tories – overall, a 2/3 vote in favour. This was then controversially blocked by the UK government. There are also Guardian journalists who support trans rights, notably Owen Jones.
KG, congratulations, you have one supportive journalist that you can mention (slow clap). Name me six such journalists of the dear old Grauniad who have openly shown support for the expression of trans people to thrive openly in society this last year since the overthrow of Sunak – something which shouldn’t be hugely controversial in any reasonable polity, for any supposedly progressive organ of the press employing hundreds of journalists – and I’ll grant you the idea of there being journalists, plural, who ‘support’ trans rights, working at the Graudian. At this point after all of the gaslighting I’m inclined to be highly skeptical that you can find very many beyond Owen, singular. I mean, maybe Juliet Jaques is still technically on the Guraniad’s payroll even though they probably haven’t given her an opinion column since the early 2010s.
Also, please spare me that “noting ‘both sides …’ is a huge over-simplification” malarkey. Many of the minor parties in the UK parliament, besides Labour and the Tories, have also abandoned their support for trans people, often quietly (an exodus of trans-supportive folk in the ranks of the LibDems) or through obviously anti-trans policy announcements. When the Scottish parliament has tried to assert its independence in this fashion, it has been quickly overruled by the central parliament – such as the veto of the Gender Recognition Bill last year. It seems devolution only goes so far. As far as I know, trans kids are still faced with intolerable barriers to obtaining medical care – barriers that have recently been redoubled by Starmer extending existing bans further into the future – and in the face of wall-to-wall transphobia in the media, there is a real death toll.
Hundreds of artists and media flee X
It’s the simple truth. Whether you choose to acknowledge or deny it is up to you of course.
Yes, that’s what I was referring to.
Someone once told me Twitter was the future of journalism. And watching its story arc, I realize they may have been right.
Jadehawk and I have been on BS for a while, come find us! This last week we had a massive influx of Australians, you might not know this but the #auspol hashtag was by far the most active politics tribe on Twitter for years. And it feels like just this last few days they have all come over to BS. It’s nothing special, it’s just Twitter circa 2009.
Just seen on today’s ABC news site :
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-11-17/how-elon-musk-got-even-richer-after-donald-trump-election-win/104609228
[related]
A thoughtful take:
StevoR: how has the stock price of SpaceX gone up? It’s private, not traded on any exchange.
Anyway, it’s a pity it took Trump’s actual election to get people to finally ditch X, as if it hadn’t been a toxic hellhole for a while already.
No one in our organization has ever had an account on xhitter and we do not even go there through links.
We are not coping well with the current and impending destructive, chaotic society in which we find ourselves. We created a video as a cathartic effort and are sharing it broadly.
It is at: http://theartsinarizona.org/the_heroic_heretic_faces_more_reality.mp4
Sincerely,
Sherman J of the arts in arizona
and all the international family of Omnigma Organizations
@37. numerobis : Going off what the linked news article said. I guess, maybe, they just mean his Tesla stocks then?
Also, yes, but I think a lot of people had already ditched X long ago as well.
Here: https://www.reuters.com/technology/space/musks-spacex-preparing-launch-tender-offer-dec-135share-ft-reports-2024-11-15/
A study found that X’s algorithm now loves two things: Republicans and Elon Musk
They said they would no longer post on Twitter. They’ll still cite it, just as they’ve long cited the absolutely most horrible of sources when it was relevant to the story.