UK newspaper The Guardian to no longer post on Elon Musk’s X platform

The Guardian will stop posting articles on the social media platform X, the British newspaper announced on Wednesday.

The news organisation said their decision was based on “the often disturbing content promoted or found on the platform,” including conspiracy theories and racism.

Users will still be able to share articles, but The Guardian said they would not post them on official accounts, adding that their resources could be better used elsewhere.

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, acquired the platform (formerly known as Twitter) in 2022 for an estimated $44 billion (€40.7 billion).

Musk made several changes, including the platform’s blue tick verification system and content moderation policy. He also reinstated previously banned accounts such as that of US President-elect Donald Trump.

In 2023, he rebranded the platform, changing its name from Twitter to X.

Musk was a vocal supporter of Trump during the 2024 US presidential election, posting about the vote extensively on X.

A report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) ahead of the election found that Musk’s false or misleading claims on the platform had gathered nearly two billion views.

Musk’s political posts overall had two times as many views as US political campaign ads recorded in the platform’s disclosure dataset, the report found.

The billionaire has now been tapped by Trump to run a new department of government efficiency.

The election campaign underlined that “X is a toxic media platform and that its owner, Elon Musk, has been able to use its influence to shape political discourse,” the Guardian said on its website.

The nonprofit US news organisation NPR stopped posting on X in 2023 after it was falsely labelled “state-affiliated media” and later as “government-funded”.