British News Publisher, The Guardian, has announced its decision not to publish posts on X social media anymore.
In its statement, the Guardian cited the presence of offensive content on the platform, such as racist, toxic and conspiracy-driven materials.
The Guardian, with a following of 10.7 million on X, becomes the first prominent media organization in the United Kingdom to opt out of X.
Critics argue that Elon Musk, the owner of X, fails to address the issue of harmful content on his platform.
In a report published on Wednesday, titled: “Why the Guardian is no longer posting on X,” the outlet clarified that while they will stop posting from its official editorial accounts on the platform, however, X users can still share their articles.
The report partly reads: “We wanted to let readers know that we will no longer post on any official Guardian editorial accounts on the social media site X (formerly Twitter). 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.
“Our reporters will also be able to carry on using the site for news-gathering purposes, just as they use other social networks in which we do not officially engage.”
The Guardian further explained that social media can be an important tool for news organisations that will help to reach new audiences but, maintained that “at this point, X now plays a diminished role in promoting our work. Our journalism is available and open to all on our website and we would prefer people to come to theguardian.com and support our work there.
“Thankfully, we can do this because our business model does not rely on viral content tailored to the whims of the social media giants’ algorithms – instead we’re funded directly by our readers,” the Guardian said in an editorial published on its website.
Logo: The Guardian of UK