The Guardian has announced that it will no longer post on X, calling Elon Musk’s social media platform a “toxic” source of “far-right conspiracy theories and racism.” Conservative users accused the liberal British newspaper of “throwing in the towel” when confronted with free speech.
In an explanation to readers on Wednesday, the paper said that “the benefits of being on X are now outweighed by the negatives and that resources could be better used promoting our journalism elsewhere.”
The Guardian said it had considered the decision for some time, “given the often disturbing content promoted or found on the platform, including far-right conspiracy theories and racism.”
X “is a toxic media platform,” the newspaper declared, claiming that the decision to quit was finally made after the US presidential election, in which Elon Musk used the site’s influence “to shape political discourse.”
The Guardian has more than 80 accounts on X with approximately 27 million followers. Its journalists will still use the platform for “news gathering purposes” and X embeds will still appear in Guardian articles, the paper said.
Musk purchased Twitter for $44 billion in 2022, rebranding it as X and rolling back most of its censorship policies. Pro-censorship activists and NGOs have claimed that this losing of restrictions has allowed so-called “hate speech” to flourish on the platform, a claim denied by the billionaire.
Last month, journalists Matt Taibbi and Paul Thacker revealed that one of these NGOs – the Center for Countering Digital Hate – was lobbying top Democrats in Washington to “kill” X, and pressuring regulators in the UK and EU to “impose consequences for harmful content” shared on the platform.
The Guardian’s announcement came three months after several Labour Party lawmakers in the UK quit X, accusing Musk’s platform of inciting a spate of nationwide rioting after a teenager of Rwandan descent stabbed three children to death and injured ten others in the town of Southport, near Liverpool.
The newspaper’s decision has been mocked by conservatives and right-wingers on X. “The Guardian didn't have a problem with the previous Twitter regime censoring the Hunter Biden laptop story to 'shape political discourse' and interfere in an election,” commentator Paul Joseph Watson wrote. “Elon allows free speech, and they have a tantrum.”
Under X’s previous management, “many of us would get banned weekly (in some cases, daily) but we never left. As soon as Elon turns the tables a little bit, leftists throw in the towel,” another commenter wrote.