The Guardian leaving X is Elon Musk’s greatest gift
Knitting a pussy hat. Threatening to move to Canada. Taking to public spaces to scream into the abyss. That’s sooo 2016. For those looking to ostentatiously signal their fury at the election of Donald Trump this time around, there’s only one game in town: flouncing off of X.
Yes, Trump is the American president-elect again and the global great and good really aren’t taking it well… again. Still, much of the fury this time around has been focussed not so much on “The Donald” himself, but on his richest and almost-as-hated backer, billionaire Elon Musk.
Musk Derangement Syndrome is spreading like wildfire. From New York to London to Berlin, the laptop classes are mumbling his name under their breath and mass deleting their accounts on X – the social-media platform formerly known as Twitter, which Musk bought in 2022.
The day after the election, X broke its records both for US web traffic and account deactivations, according to “digital market intelligence” company Similarweb. Ever since Musk took over, liberal-Leftists have been horrified by his efforts to turn X into a much freer platform than the Whole Foods-set struggle session it had hitherto resembled. Now, a trickle is becoming a flood.
Indeed, even legacy publications are pompously announcing they’re leaving. Today, the Guardian revealed it would no longer be posting its stuff on X, stating that the “benefits… are now outweighed by the negatives” and citing the “disturbing content” supposedly prevalent on the platform. That Britain’s premier “liberal” newspaper seems not to understand that freedom of speech means occasionally encountering things you might find offensive is a telling sign of the times.
Despite all the high-minded reasoning, the turn against X is down to one thing really. Namely, control. Twitter, when it was Twitter, was theirs. It was the platform beloved by journalists and politicians, with policies that protected their brittle sensibilities; the major platform mad enough to permanently suspend a sitting US president, purely because America’s “wine moms” demanded it.
Musk changed all that. He allowed a broader swathe of opinion, including “deplorable”, pro-Trump opinion, to be expressed on X. They’ve never forgiven him for it.
Will the X boycott – not to be confused with the sex boycott, which has been called for by roughly the same sort of people – last? Experience would suggest not. Anti-Trump tantrums are often just that – tantrums. They calm down eventually. Miley Cyrus didn’t actually move to Canada after 2016. While many are migrating over to Bluesky, an alternative platform, now, I’m old enough to remember the abortive Mastodon exodus, and the Threads exodus. These people find X too hard to quit.
All I’ll say is, as an X user, I hope the Guardian and the Bluesky converts and the celebs do stay, or return. Not for the articles, or the insights, but for the laughs. To those of us who haven’t been in the grips of their elitist, anti-populist hysteria over the past eight years, watching so many supposedly wise and well-educated people say ridiculous things on a daily basis has been hilarious, not to mention eye-opening. Long may it continue.