The Guardian will no longer be posting its articles on X, the publication has announced.
The left-wing newspaper announced it would be leaving in the wake of the presidential election. It “reasoned”:
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.
X users will still be able to share our articles, and the nature of live news reporting means we will still occasionally embed content from X within our article pages.”
They failed to publish any posts to support its claim – a somewhat vital component of any compelling argument.
One user marked the occasion by mocking the “loss” and posting a thread of headlines from The Guardian that range from laugh-out-loud funny to “truly deranged” to “typed from a mental asylum” territory.
Read (and hopefully laugh) below:
And that’s just a sampling!
This idea was soon explored by others.
Community Notes were also suggested as a reason for the departure.
The news also caught the attention of platform owner Elon Musk.