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Major Media Reform Group Says Goodbye to Musk's 'Toxic Twitter'
"It's clear that X will not correct course under Musk's leadership, and it's time for Free Press to exit."
Nov 15, 2024
Media watchdog Free Press announced on Thursday that it would leave the social media platform formerly known as Twitter over concerns about owner Elon Musk's platforming of hateful speech, fostering an increase of disinformation, and his intensifying harassment of critics
In doing so, the advocacy group joined the more than 100,000 U.S. users who have abandoned Musk's X following Donald Trump's victory in the presidential election last week. Musk aggressively used the site to boost Trump and his campaign, promoting him with tweets worth $24 million and spreading disinformation about the Democratic Party and the integrity of U.S. voting infrastructure.
"For years, Free Press has sought to hold social-media companies accountable for amplifying hate and lies that undermine public health, safety, and democracy. We have pushed for meaningful reforms that would protect users and have extensively documented the platforms' failures. None of these companies has fallen so low as X under Elon Musk's ownership," the group wrote in their departure announcement.
"Musk has turned X into a propaganda machine for racists, misogynists, xenophobes, antisemites, and transphobes."
"Free Press will no longer be posting on X, effective immediately, and we invite you to join us in ceasing activity on Musk's platform," they continued. "We refuse to give X any legitimacy."
When Musk took control of Twitter over two years ago, he reinstated the accounts of white supremancists and conspiracy theorists. About a month into his tenure, he made his the first social media platform to allow Trump to post again following the January 6, 2021 insurrection.
"Free Press is committed to ensuring that people have a voice in the decisions that shape our media system. Musk, quite simply, only wants to amplify himself and others who share his far-right, bigoted values," Free Press co-CEO Jessica J. González said in a statement. "Musk has turned X into a propaganda machine for racists, misogynists, xenophobes, antisemites, and transphobes. His continued mismanagement of the platform has endangered people on the receiving end of his abuse and threatened our democracy."
When Musk first took the reins at Twitter, Free Press and other groups met with him to discuss how to protect users from harassment. When it became clear that Musk was not taking the problem seriously, Free Press joined with other organizations in mobilizing an advertising boycott via the #StopToxicTwitter campaign. Ultimately, the site's value dipped by $35 billion. Musk responded by suing or threatening to sue scholars and advocates who criticized the platform's direction.
"Through our research, organizing, and reporting, Free Press has fought to reform X," González said. "We remember the potential that it once had, giving ordinary people the means to speak directly to power and build community. But it's clear that X will not correct course under Musk's leadership, and it's time for Free Press to exit."
Independent research found that X's U.s. usership had declined prior to Trump's win, with the segment of the population who reported using the site dropping by nearly one-third between 2023 and 2024. The site saw its largest single-day post-Musk drop in U.S. users on the day immediately after the election, with over 115,000 million people deactivating their accounts. The platform also lost over 281,600 users worldwide. At the same time, competitor Bluesky gained 1 million users in the week after the election.
X also saw its highest U.S. traffic for the year on November 6, at 46.5 million. How these two trends will balance each other out in the coming months remains to be seen, as Similarweb's David Carr recently wrote:
Some users swearing off the X service will presumably stop using it, or use it less, without necessarily deactivating their accounts. Whether there will be a measurable decrease in the audience for X as the result of politics remains to be seen. By the weekend, X usage had tapered off to a more typical level over the past year.
On the other hand, X's recent daily peak in U.S. traffic doesn't make up for the erosion in audience the service has seen over the past couple of years since Musk took ownership of the service.
In the week following the election, several prominent journalists, activists, and authors have also announced their departure from X, including climate advocate Bill McKibben, historian Heather Cox Richardson, novelist Stephen King, journalism professor Jay Rosen, and media outlet The Guardian.
"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 Guardianexplained on Wednesday. "The U.S. 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."
Journalist Don Lemon gave an extra reason for his decision to abandon the platform: new terms of service taking effect on Friday that require all lawsuits brought against the company be heard in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas rather than the Western District.
"As The Washington Post recently reported on X's decision to change the terms, this 'ensures that such lawsuits will be heard in courthouses that are a hub for conservatives, which experts say could make it easier for X to shield itself from litigation and punish critics,'" Lemon said.
However, not all critics of Musk and Trump are ready to abandon the site.
"I haven't left X/Twitter—at least not yet, anyway—despite its morally unconscionable management by Musk, because I believe that in this moment of national crisis those of us who want a better America need to stay connected any way we can, and a lot of friends are currently still there," wrotePhiladelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch. "But building a new, engaged social network on Bluesky is going to bea major focus going into 2025 as we look to rebuild American democracy from the ashes of what just happened."
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'Let's See If I Get Banned Again!' Journalist Releases Team Trump Rubio Dossier
Trump's reported pick for secretary of state previously suggested the president-elect "could not be trusted with America's nuclear codes" and criticized him for "using language in seeming praise of Putin."
Nov 12, 2024
With U.S. President-elect Donald Trump reportedly set to pick Sen. Marco Rubio as his secretary of state, journalist Ken Klippenstein on Tuesday published a 551-page dossier that the campaign previously compiled on the Florida Republican.
Like the dossier on Vice President-elect JD Vance that Klippenstein released on KLIPNEWS in September, the Rubio file "was offered to major media outlets this summer," the independent journalist noted. "All refused to publish it, not over questions about its authenticity, but because the media thinks it is an arm of the national security state, complying with U.S. government's warnings that because the document came from Iran, the American people shouldn't see it."
"Let's see if I get banned again!" Klippenstein said Tuesday on X, the social media platform formerly called Twitter and now owned by billionaire Trump backer Elon Musk. Klippenstein was "permanently" suspended over the Vance dossier, but after The New York Timesreported last month that the Trump campaign coordinated with X to suppress the document, Musk had Klippenstein reinstated in the name of "free speech principles," according to correspondence obtained by the journalist.
The latest dossier, Klippenstein noted, "is authentic and there are no signs it was altered, something spokespersons for both the Trump campaign and Rubio did not deny when I contacted them for comment and provided them with copies of the dossier."
The journalist highlighted sections of the document detailing Rubio's past remarks about Trump related to Russian collusion in 2016, the 2020 election, Trump's control over nuclear weapons, the September 11 terrorist attacks, Russian President Vladimir Putin, NATO, North Korea's Kim Jong Un, free trade, China, immigration, Iran, the Iraq war, and the U.S. withdrawal from Syria.
For example, the dossier notes that "in 2016, Rubio contended that Trump was dangerous and could not be trusted with America's nuclear codes," and "in 2022, Rubio said it was 'unfortunate' Trump was using language in seeming praise of Putin."
In addition to detailing Rubio's critiques of Trump and "undermining of the 'America First' agenda," the document—last updated April 1, 2024—lays out some of his "questionable" policy positions as well as "ethics issues" and "controversial associations."
So far, Trump's other reported or confirmed foreign policy picks are: Congressman Mike Waltz (R-Fla.) for national security adviser, Congresswoman Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) for ambassador to the United Nations, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee for ambassador to Israel, Steven C. Witkoff for special envoy to the Middle East, and Brian Hook to lead the U.S. State Department transition team.
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'This Is Political,' Journalist Who Published Vance Dossier Says of Permanent X Ban
"It's not about a violation of X's policies," wrote Ken Klippenstein. "What else would you call this but politically motivated?"
Sep 27, 2024
Independent journalist Ken Klippenstein said Friday that he was privately informed by the Elon Musk-owned social media platform X that his account has been permanently banned, a decision that Klippenstein argued was "politically motivated."
X, formerly Twitter, suspended Klippenstein on Thursday after he posted to the platform a link to his Substack article containing a download link for a 271-page dossier that Republican nominee Donald Trump's campaign prepared to vet Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), who was ultimately chosen as the former president's running mate.
The dossier, Klippenstein noted, "reportedly comes from an alleged Iranian government hack of the Trump campaign," and major news outlets such as Politicodeclined opportunities to publish it. The U.S. Justice Department on Friday charged three men with allegedly carrying out a hack against the Trump campaign.
In a statement issued late Thursday afternoon as it faced backlash, X said that "Ken Klippenstein was temporarily suspended for violating our rules on posting unredacted private personal information, specifically Sen. Vance's physical addresses and the majority of his Social Security number."
On Friday, Klippenstein—who has previously worked for The Intercept and The Nation—shared a private message from X informing him that his account is "permanently in read-only mode, which means you can't post, Repost, or Like content" or "create new accounts."
"The two-step dance X is doing here—avoiding further backlash by pretending like my suspension is just a temporary thing, no big deal, while privately suspending me permanently—only makes sense when you consider the political dimensions," Klippenstein wrote on his Substack. "Elon Musk is an outspoken supporter of Donald Trump and JD Vance's political campaign. The Wall Street Journalreported that he promised $45 million a month for a pro-Trump Super PAC (Musk subsequently disputed this). So X clearly doesn't want to give the appearance that my ban was politically motivated. But a careful look at the pretext X cites for my suspension makes it obvious that this is political."
"The media is going to see the case of the Vance dossier and conclude that reporting on similar documents isn't worth losing their social media accounts over."
Observers have noted the obvious parallels between the social media platform's handling of the Vance dossier and a 2020 New York Post story on the contents of Hunter Biden's laptop. At the time, Twitter—not yet under Musk's ownership—placed restrictions on sharing of the Post story, limits that were reversed months later.
Klippenstein noted Friday that Musk—a self-proclaimed "free speech absolutist"—was "so incensed by Twitter's previous owners' decision to block the story on its platform that he took the extraordinary step of releasing Twitter's internal correspondence to independent journalist Matt Taibbi so he could report on how the decision came about. (I support his transparency, by the way.)"
"Now, anyone posting a link to my article finds their account locked, which is exactly how Twitter handled the Hunter Biden laptop story by the New York Post," Klippenstein wrote.
Journalist Lee Fang pointed out shortly after Klippenstein's ban that "the Hunter Biden laptop—which had newsworthy info that was fair game—also had personal dox info, far more than this Vance doc."
"The Biden laptop had bank/credit cards, personal addresses, nudity, etc," Fang added. "You can still link to those Biden docs on X, but Vance doc link banned?"
Klippenstein argued that "the biggest tell that this is political" is that X did not offer him a chance to restore his account by removing the post that resulted in his ban, as the platform typically does with users accused of violating its policies.
"As an experiment, last night my editor and I decided to redact all 'private' information from the Vance dossier in my story here at Substack," Klippenstein wrote Friday. "Despite filing an appeal in which I mention this, I remain banned. So it's not about a violation of X's policies. What else would you call this but politically motivated?"
"Boo hoo, poor me, I lost my account. That's not the point here," he continued. "If you were frustrated with the media's refusal to publish the Vance dossier, prepare for a future that's worse. The media is going to see the case of the Vance dossier and conclude that reporting on similar documents isn't worth losing their social media accounts over. Why take the risk when you can just blather on about the horse race? As always, it's the public that loses out the most."
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