The mayor of Paris announced to her 1.5 million followers on Monday that she would be quitting X, formerly Twitter, claiming that the social platform has “become a gigantic global sewer” that destroys meaningful political discussion by proliferating abuse and misinformation.
Mayor Anne Hidalgo wrote in a post that “controversy, rumor, and crude manipulation rule public debate, fueled by Twitter’s algorithm, where the only thing that counts is the number of ‘likes.’ Facts are irrelevant.”
She called out Elon Musk without mentioning him by name, saying that the website’s owner “intentionally exacerbates tensions and conflicts,” citing “thousands of anonymous accounts and its troll farms.”
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She concluded her post with a quote from Martin Luther King, Jr., writing, “We must learn to live together as brothers, or we will all die together as idiots.” She continued, “We can trust each other and find our way back to democracy, peace, and fraternity. It is in our hands.”
But according to The Guardian, opponents pointed out that Hidalgo has been criticized on X, under the hashtag #TahitiGate, for taking a partially taxpayer-funded trip to Tahiti during which she visited her daughter earlier this month. The mayor claimed that she visited the French island to see a 2024 Summer Olympics surfing site.
Hidalgo’s office informed the Associated Press that the mayor’s choice to leave X was not a response to Musk’s recent backlash but was a long-considered decision.
After purchasing Twitter in 2022, Musk fired thousands of employees, including teams that were responsible for content moderation. He then lost several major advertisers, including Apple Inc., for allegedly promoting antisemitism and placing promotional material next pro-Nazi posts.
