The presence of X in the information space is incompatible with reliable information and functional democracies. The media are the first to be targeted. You can fight back ! First step : be listed on HelloQuitX
The media are Musk’s personal enemies
According to Elon Musk "Legacy media are dead,", they are now replaced by X and its users.
And he intends to flood them with HIS information
This stance doesn’t come out of nowhere. It reflects the attitude of the American alt-right towards the media, theorized by Steve Bannon : "The Democrats don’t matter. The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit."
X has been applying this strategy to the letter since Elon Musk’s arrival :
- Elon Musk repeatedly tells his 200M followers that traditional media lie. He even compares them to "supervillains" of free speech ...
- Elon Musk’s stance on free speech is, however, inconsistent and does not extend to his policy on X/Twitter : "If Twitter (X) unilaterally decides to suppress free speech, it’s not a First Amendment violation, but if it does so under government orders without judicial oversight, it is."
- Upon his arrival, journalists’ accounts critical of Elon Musk were suspended, while accounts previously banned for promoting Nazism or homophobia were reinstated. Some were even monetized.
- Elon Musk considers himself the owner of every X account and believes he can do as he pleases, including depriving a media outlet of its X account.
- Bots are rampant on X, and the advent of LLMs like ChatGPT already enables automated accounts to spread disinformation through lifelike fake users. Some directly engage with media posts’ audiences in comment sections, sometimes even disparaging journalists (@mlcnvkvc is likely an LLM-powered bot).
- In the name of "free speech," Twitter/X’s moderation teams were decimated, and Twitter’s former Trust & Safety head had to flee his home due to threats linked to Elon Musk’s criticism of him.
- Policies to combat disinformation, particularly on the COVID-19 pandemic, were suspended. For Musk, fact-checkers are "huge liars and incredibly biased".
- On X, all users’ feeds are enriched with toxic content, which mechanically buries informative accounts expressing measured views and increases hostility in exchanges on X.
- Elon Musk sees the media as competitors to X and works to weaken them. Yet at the same time, he relies on their content and uses mafia-like tactics to coerce them. For instance, he threatened NPR, which announced it was leaving X, to give its account to someone else if it didn’t resume posting on X. How clearer can it be that Musk views media as unpaid volunteers serving him ? His strategy is clear : promote X and its AI, Grok, as the most reliable and responsive information source. All journalistic content added to X now contributes to this strategy.
For a media, staying on X means accepting his vision and methods. As stated in the terms of service, X can do whatever it wants with your account and data—your account does not belong to you, he as a non exlusive licence to do whatever he want with your data. It’s called suicide.
Elon Musk has dumped tons of manure into his global information pool to drown out the media and their audience. As Americans’ trust in traditional media declines, let’s not wait for this phenomenon to spread—let’s leave X and move together to the pool next door !
Are you a media outlet ?
As a media outlet, participating in HelloQuitX guarantees recovering your followers en masse on BlueSky and Mastodon while reclaiming digital spaces with better post/reaction conversion rates (fewer bots). The entry ticket is one of the following three simple actions :
- Follow HelloQuitX on X, Mastodon, BlueSky.
- Remove the ‘share on X’ button from your site.
- Request to be listed on the HelloQuitteX page, which lists media outlets supporting the operation with at least a status of “considering.”
