The Spanish newspaper The Vanguardbased in Barcelona, announced on Thursday, November 14, that it would stop publishing content on X (formerly Twitter), the Elon Musk platform that it has become, according to the newspaper “a network of disinformation”the day after a similar announcement in the British newspaper the guardian.
“The ex-Twitter viralizes messages that violate human rights”the newspaper accuses in an editorial, in which it assures that, however, it will continue to follow the accounts of personalities, companies or personalities on the social network to “to be able to promptly inform its readers of the messages or debates that may be exchanged or taking place there”. “The people in charge of the newspaper explained that they had been worried for a long time, because conspiracy theories and contempt for human rights are very present in X. The factor that finally decided them to leave the social network was the coverage of the presidential elections in USA “the text continues.
At the end of the election he won on November 5, Donald Trump announced his intention to appoint X boss Elon Musk to head a commission tasked with cutting public spending, along with Republican businessman Vivek Ramaswamy. “X has been full of toxic content since the arrival of Elon Musk (…) in an increasingly marked manner.”punish again The Vanguard. “This social network has become a platform where conspiracy theories and misinformation find a sounding board”.
“Toxic platform”
In a short article published on Wednesday, the Guardiana British newspaper with 10.8 million subscribers on X, announced that it would make the same decision. “We believe that the benefits of remaining at X are now outweighed by the disadvantages, and that our resources could be better used to promote our journalism elsewhere”the newspaper explained, “X is a toxic platform and its owner, Elon Musk, has used it to influence public debate”.
If you stop using it, the newspaper does not seem to have decided for the moment to permanently close its X account. Nor has it commented on the possibility, for its journalists, of continuing to send messages on the network individually. “However, our journalists will continue to use this site to gather information, in the same way that they use other social networks in which they Guardian is not officially present »however he clarified the article.
HE Guardian It also has 8.9 million subscribers on Facebook, 5.8 million subscribers on Instagram, 2.3 million on YouTube and 19,000 on Mastodon, a platform whose approach is similar to that of X.
Distrust in the media
Both newspapers are not the first to make such a decision. Before them, other titles, such as Sveriges Radio, the Swedish public radio, or the American media NPR and PBS, chose to distance themselves from the platform and stop publishing. Since April 12, 2023, the official NPR radio account has shown a message explaining to readers how to follow his work outside of Elon Musk’s platform. At the time, while the billionaire had not yet openly revealed his pro-Trump positions, he did so to protest new rules for labeling media accounts on the social network.
The owner of Tesla, SpaceX and X has never hidden his animosity towards the media world. Already in 2018, unhappy with the treatment reserved for his electric car company after the publication of an investigation, he raised the idea of launching a rating service for media and journalists.
This mistrust has increased considerably since he became the head of the social network: slowdown in the viewing of some sites (in particular that of the New York Times), modification of the way links pointing to press sites are displayed, automatic response to the media through an email with a simple emoji (💩), obsessive publication of messages claiming that traditional media “lie” to the public… Also on Wednesday, in response to an X account that was happy about the drop in viewership of certain American television channels since the election of Donald Trump, Elon Musk responded: “You are the media now. »
