It’s no secret to anyone who is regularly on social media and is not from the land of MAGA Delulu that Elon Musk has not only eroded the value of X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, but he has turned it into a utopia of racial slurs, right-wing propaganda and shameless Trump-humping. Well, one media outlet is not about to pretend Musk hasn’t turned X into a MAGA fan page and it will no longer post on the platform because of it.
The Guardian is having none of Musk and his X-Klan (see what I did there?) shenanigans.
From Variety:
The Guardian made the announcement on Wednesday in a post on its website, writing that “the benefits of being on the platform formerly called Twitter” have now been “outweighed by the negatives.” The publication cited the “often disturbing content” found on the platform and said the way it handled last week’s U.S. presidential election — which saw Donald Trump win a second term — “crystallized” its decision.
“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 publication said. “The U.S. 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.”
Musk, of course, responded to the news on X by basically describing Trump but applying the definition to The Guardian, tweeting, “They are a laboriously vile propaganda machine.”
That’s rich coming from the guy who supports the guy who has been fact-checked and found to be lying more than any modern president — the same president who spent four years spreading factless and thoroughly debunked election fraud propaganda until he kicked and screamed his way back into the White House.
Shout out to The Guardian for refusing to normalize Musk, Trump and the rest of the white nationalist propagandists who are, indeed, relying on lies and bigotry to “shape political discourse.” That’s what integrity actually looks like, not that any of the aforementioned would know anything about that.