European Federation of Journalists to stop posting content on X
The European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) has announced that it will stop publishing content on Elon Musk’s social media platform, X, from January 20th, 2025, when Donald Trump will officially become the 47th president of the United States.
The organisation stated that it can “no longer ethically participate in a social network that its owner has transformed into a machine of disinformation and propaganda”.
It joins The Guardian and other European media outlets including Dagens Nyheter, La Vanguardia, Ouest-France and Sud-Ouest in coming off the platform, due to the impact of Musk on the organisation.
The EFJ is the largest organisation of journalists in Europe, representing over 295,000 journalists in 44 countries has announced that it will stop posting content on X.
The company’s general secretary Ricardo Gutiérrez stated:
“After the US elections, EFJ pointed out the threat to democracy and freedom of expression posed by the cooperation between the president of the most powerful country in the world, Donald J. Trump, and the richest man in the world, Elon Musk, who is also the owner of social network X and has been appointed to lead a “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) when Donald J. Trump takes office as president on January 20, 2025.
“We cannot continue to participate in the social network feed of a man who proclaims the death of the media and therefore of journalists”, said the president of EFJ, Maja Sever.
“The social media site X has become the preferred vector for conspiracy theories, racism, far-right ideas and misogynistic rhetoric. X is a platform that no longer serves the public interest at all, but the special ideological and financial interests of its owner and his political allies”, he writes further.
“The editorial evolution of X, since its acquisition by Elon Musk, is simply contrary to our humanist values, our commitment to press freedom and media pluralism, and our fight against all forms of hatred and discrimination. The decision to suspend our @EFJEUROPE account seemed clear to us and we invite all our members and all organizations defending freedom of expression to migrate to other platforms.”
@technology@beehaw.org @news@beehaw.org @usnews@beehaw.org @programming@beehaw.org @technology@lemmy.world @news@lemmy.world #technology
Probable source: European Federation of Journalists to stop posting content on X, by Jack Peat - The London Economic
No source is visible in the post. I don’t know if that’s an issue with my client, or an oversight.
Journalist and other public people should stop using social networks to share their opinions and thoughts. They should use their own instancein a federated network,
deleted by creator
Hopefully Europe is not as corrupted and won’t make the same mistakes :(
Props
I’ll be honest, this kinda feel like the wrong move. If correct information is the antiseptic to misinformation, wouldn’t X be the exact place you should be posting your journalism to?
Think of it as someone’s private house or warehouse. Everyone is invited in to hang out and talk. At first there is a lot of freedom and no one is really affected. It becomes popular and there are many different types of people and open conversations are happening everywhere.
A new owner takes over the place.
He decides that some people shouldn’t be allowed to talk. He has a bunch of loud mouth obnoxious friends with extreme ideas and he starts giving them a louder voice. Anyone that disagrees or challenges them are drowned out, pushed to the back or told to leave. It’s become their place and their hang out now.
It’s not a public space and you really have no rights to anything there because it’s all privately owned by someone else. Write, share and save as much as you want there but none of it is really under your control or ownership.
You can shout, fight, disagree and challenge them all you want but it’s their place. You have no power there because if you put up too much of a fight, you’ll be pushed out, told to leave and never come back.
No. Let it die. Let it become an obvious negative, like 4chan.
That’s how it works in a perfect system, not on Twitter or other corpo social media. The algorithm pushes you down while lifting all the rage-inducing posts, because they drive engagement and your posts don’t.
So let’s say you are at a place and people start throwing rocks at you. Wouldn’t that be the place where you should stay?
Don’t reply right away. Take like 18 hours to think about this. Like really mull it over. Make sure your gears are turning. Write your ideas down so that you don’t forget. Re-read what you write a few times. Really give it some consideration.
That’s a lot of time to mull over not being stoned to death.
