Politics and Current
Joy Reid Leaves X, Encourages MAGA Field Day; Don Lemon, Lizzo and 115,000 others flee platform in mass exodus
Joy Reid has joined a growing list of progressives saying goodbye to X, Elon Musk’s social media platform, which has tilted sharply to the fitting under the mega-billionaire’s leadership.
“It just wasn’t worth it,” said the MSNBC host, who boasted greater than 1.9 million followers. Reid said her departure has every little thing to do with Musk turning X into the News Max of social media – uncompromisingly pro-Trump.
NBC News reports X’s AI-powered trends section commonly promoted election conspiracy theories and coordinated attacks on Democratic candidate Kamala Harris in the months leading as much as the election.
The exodus accelerated after Donald Trump regained the presidency. Since then, Musk has – literally – sided with the Republican standard-bearer and was elected co-chair of a commission to streamline government and dramatically cut federal spending.
“I have not published for a very long time. I simply didn’t need to post content that was purchased by the present owner,” Reid said in a press release. Video from TikTok announcing their breakup.
She claimed that she kept her account because she was afraid that “someone would try to take this name and use it for nefarious purposes.”
Reid asked her followers to affix her on BlueSky, created by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey.
While Company Meanwhile, Instagram Threads claims to have surpassed 275 million lively users.
Former CNN anchor Don Lemon was one other major candidate for BlueSky. He published his farewell video at X, earlier Wednesday, saying the platform had lost its way.
“I loved interacting with all of you on Twitter and then X all these years, but it’s time for me to go,” Lemon said. “I used to believe it was a place for honest debate and discussion, transparency and free speech, but now I feel it is not serving that purpose.”
The Guardian, a leftist publication published in the UKwithdrawn from X earlier this week, citing “disturbing content” peppered with “far-right conspiracy theories and racism.”
Around the time Reid said goodbye, pop star Lizzo announced her departure from BlueSky, saying, “We’re leaving toxicity behind in 2024.”
MAGA users he reveled in retreat of the left.
“The Meltdown is hilarious,” one commenter wrote. “Wait until they realize no one cares and crawl back.”
“These leftists would rather escape the last four years than defend them…. Proving that you cannot defend what (sic!) cannot be defended,” trumpeted one other.
Meanwhile, actress Justine Bateman mocked the momentous statements made by public figures like Lemon.
“First a video about leaving, and now a written statement? This is more information than we received from Biden when he dropped out of the race,” Bateman he wrote.
But not only stars migrate from X.
“Every time I opened it, things were being thrown at me that made me feel bad,” Kara Wurtz, a 39-year-old financial executive from St. Louis, he said NBC News. “I noticed that from Tuesday to Wednesday I started seeing a lot more anti-woman things. And I said, “You know what? It’s personal. I’m done.”
When purchasing Twitter in April 2022, Musk promised that the web site wouldn’t take sides.
“For Twitter to be worthy of public trust, it must be politically neutral, which in reality means worrying the far right and the far left equally,” he added. he said.
Musk maintains that X is politically neutral.
“At Platform X, we are very strict about the principles of fair play, a level playing field and fairness to all parties,” he said this month at a town hall event in Pennsylvania. “We want both sides to say their piece and allow for a free debate.”
A spokesman for X wouldn’t say what number of users had left the platform, but indicated metrics revealing 942 million posts last week, an all-time record. David Carr, news and research editor at Likeweb, told NBC that a complete of greater than 115,000 people have had their platform deactivated since Election Day.
X may even see more accounts closed from Friday when a latest regulations for the availability of services goes into effect requiring all users to consent to their posts getting used to coach artificial intelligence.
Regardless of the numbers, it’s clear that X is well on its technique to becoming the subsequent right-wing echo chamber.
BlueSky, however, appears poised to emerge as a leftist enclave, which implies that after again the most important loser will probably be thought diversity.