The Guardian will now not put up its content material below its official account on X, the British newspaper introduced on Wednesday.
The Guardian said the transfer had been into consideration for some time, “given the customarily disturbing content material promoted or discovered on the platform, together with far-right conspiracy theories and racism.” The media outlet added that the U.S. presidential election marketing campaign underscored its view that the social media platform is “poisonous” and that its proprietor, Elon Musk, used it to form political discourse.
The London-based paper’s announcement comes as President-elect Donald Trump named Musk as co-head of what he referred to as his “Division of Authorities Effectivity.” Musk, the billionaire proprietor of Tesla and SpaceX, was closely concerned in Trump’s marketing campaign.
X had been Twitter earlier than its board agreed to be acquired by Musk in 2022 in a deal that valued the platform at $44 billion.
X customers will nonetheless have the ability to share Guardian articles on the platform, and the newspaper’s journalists will at occasions use it for news-gathering functions, simply as they use different social networks.
“We are able to do that as a result of our enterprise mannequin doesn’t depend on viral content material tailor-made to the whims of the social media giants’ algorithms — as a substitute we’re funded immediately by our readers.”
The Guardian’s X account bio now describes itself as an archived web page and factors readers to its web site and app.
X didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
The transfer by the Guardian comes within the wake of an exodus by advertisers on X, with firms together with Apple, Coca-Cola and Disney eradicating paid adverts from X final yr. The corporate’s difficulties endured into 2024, with the World Financial institution halting all paid adverts on the platform in early September after a CBS Information investigation discovered its ads exhibiting up below a racist put up from an account that prolifically posts pro-Nazi and white nationalist content material.
Extra just lately, a survey of entrepreneurs by Kantar discovered 1 / 4 of advertisers plan to cut back spending on X in 2025.
