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End of a love affair: news media quit X over 'disinformation'
News outlets have begun quitting X, formerly Twitter, once a favourite of global media but now accused of enabling the spread of disinformation under its owner, president-elect Donald Trump ally Elon Musk.
A swathe of celebrities and corporations have announced they will be leaving X, after Trump's election and his appointment of the social media platform's owner Musk to the federal government.
Citing a "harsh and extreme" climate, Sweden's newspaper of reference, the left-liberal Dagens Nyheter (DN), on Fri became third major media outlet to stop publishing its articles on the social media platform.
"Since Elon Musk took over, the platform has increasingly merged with his and Donald Trump's political ambitions," said editor-in-chief Peter Wolodarski.
Already on Wed, Britain's centre-left daily The Guardian had announced it would no longer post content from its official accounts on X, which it called "toxic".
A day later, Spain's Vanguardia did the same, saying it would rather lose subscribers than remain on a "disinformation network".
Several users had already wondered back in 2022 whether they should remain on Twitter when Musk bought the platform and drastically reduced content moderation in the name of free speech.
The question has flared up again since Trump won this month's presidential election, actively supported by Musk.
"I would expect more publishers to part ways with X," said Stephen Barnard, a specialist on media manipulation at Butler University in the US.
"How many do so will likely depend on what actions X, Musk, and the Trump administration take with regard to media and journalism," he said.
Musk, who is the world's richest man, has been tapped by Trump's team to lead a new Department of Government Efficiency.
The Guardian has nearly 11 million followers on the platform, but it said "the benefits of being on X are now outweighed by the negatives".
It said "often disturbing content" was promoted or found on the platform, singling out "far-right conspiracy theories and racism".
This falling-out stands in stark contrast to the enthusiasm sparked by Twitter in 2008 and 2009.
Back then, media felt they had to be present there to establish direct contact with their audiences as well as with experts and decision-makers.
They found grew "audiences, built brands, developed new reporting practices, formed community, strengthened public engagement", said Barnard.
At the same time, they boosted Twitter's influence.
This increasingly symbiotic relationship may have become detrimental to the media, suggested Mathew Ingram, former chief digital writer for the Columbia Journalism Review.
"Many publishers gave up on reader comments and other forms of interaction and essentially outsourced all of that to social media like Twitter," he said.
"To that extent they are reaping what they sowed."
Criticism of Twitter predates its takeover by Musk and was centred on the network's architecture that was seen favouring polemical debate and instantaneous indignation.
It was also said to give an unbalanced reflection of society, tilting mostly towards higher-income people, and activist users.
The precise impact of the decision by newspapers, already in economic crisis, to leave X is not yet clear, but they already expect readerships to dwindle.
"We will probably lose subscriptions because some readers subscribe after seeing a news story on the social network," Jordi Juan, director of La Vanguardia, told AFP.
But Barnard said any such loss would be limited because, said, "X generates relatively little traffic to news sites compared to other platforms".
In Oct 2023, six months after American public radio NPR left Twitter, a report from the Nieman Foundation for Journalism deemed the effects of this departure "negligible" in terms of traffic.
One beneficiary of disenchantment with X appears to be Bluesky, a decentralised social media service offering many of the same functions as X.
On Fri, it said it had added one million subscribers within 24 hours. But its 16 million subscribers are still dwarfed by those of X, estimated at several hundreds of millions.
"Strictly speaking, there are no alternatives to what X offers today," Vincent Berthier, head of the technology department at RSF (Reporters Without Borders) told AFP.
"But we may need to invent them."
Berthier called departures from X "a symptom of the failure of democracies to regulate platforms" across the board.
Musk may represent "the radical face of this informational nightmare", said Berthier. "But the problem goes much deeper."
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Tonyco :
bullbearnme : Those leaving are the previous group that trying to bring down Trump. There is a reason why Elon know Twitter is a shit business. There is a competition in controlling media that is use by certain group for their agenda. Check out the top management level in the past, their background.
SoundOfMusic : Sore losers can't accept the voters' decision. They can't accept that voters have the intelligence to know what is right and what is wrong. A red sweep in congress and women voting for Trump are the clearest verdict that voters don't trust the media, and they don't agree with the media's single message.
It is not love lost of X. It was the lost of their media message control. So they're taking it out on their competitor X.
Big media is losing their subs to YouTube independent media. Big media business models are in tatter.
When dialogs from all sides are allowed to present and debate, there will be more understanding and less war.
RVLTN : Twitter allows ‘truth’ - other media + facefk openly censor and propagandize.
Mainstream media has become so pathetic they just outright lie, fabricate and chastise. These are outlets whose ethos with the public is to just ‘tell the news’ and they once did, they are dead and the viewership reflects.
You can have the loudest bullhorn but that doesn’t change the fact that there’s only three people in the valley. ( perhaps great or horrible analogy for death of mainstream at their own blade)
bullrider_21 OP : There is Western propaganda on almost all American media. But there may be more disinformation on some media than others.
bullrider_21 OP : There is so much disinformation and misinformation that Americans can't tell truth from lie anymore. Lie becomes truth and truth becomes lie.
SoundOfMusic : How to spot propaganda?
When main stream media use the same narrative and speak in unison.
How to avoid propaganda?
Search out reliable independent YouTubers. I recommend 'The Duran', https://youtube.com/@alexchristoforou?si=2L4lX7-DjPVLZFWc
Alexander Mercouris
Space Dust : the masses all have a thought,
the media lies.. and the masses, who barely possess average IQ, actually Buy the 
narrative..
" the media is against Trump" .. ffs. reverse psychology works best on the average IQ masses .
who are convinced.. BY THE MEDIA.. the media is against Trump..
Space Dust : what is worse. morons that think voting is real.
following a 
by a pied piper .
,
without the capacity to delve into what the word means, what's the history of voting.
then compare with electoral votes.
or the SELECTION of candidates by parties, not the voters.
it's hard. and both sides of the same bird. dont see, they are but a wing 🪽.
cognitive dissonance..
the masses still buy the 9/11. story .
I bet, most would argue with me about it
.yet
how many achieved a rank in a job, with a clearance, handling message traffic.. BEFORE, DURING, and AFTER 9/11.. ?
so, go on masses.. be a rat
lockdown,
crash,
money print inflation,
forced
WARP SPEED..
oh, now.
round ups
digital id
..
weimar .. Uber Alles..
Space Dust : Peter Thiel.. the
between Musk and Vance. behind the scenes players are in control..
VOTING IS A PSYOP..
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