Siân Boyle , The Guardian; Is this (finally) the end for X? Delicate Musk-Trump relationship and growing rivals spell trouble for platform
"As recently as 2022, Musk tweeted that “for Twitter to deserve public trust, it must be politically neutral, which effectively means upsetting the far right and the far left equally.” He tweeted that “Trump would be 82 at end of his term, which is too old to be chief executive of anything, let alone the United States of America.”
Months later, when Musk bought Twitter for $44bn, he fired content moderators and charged for account verification, which meant people could buy influence. Twitter was rebranded to X, shed millions of users and reinstated Trumps’s account, suspended after the White House insurrection in January 2021.
The proliferation on X of alt-right diatribe, hate speech and bots, as well as Musk’s own clash with the UK government during the riots in August, have led to mounting disquiet among X users. The Guardian and Observer announced last week that their presence on the site was now untenable and they would no longer post. Stephen King, the author, left, saying it had become “too toxic”. Oscar-winners Barbra Streisand and Jamie Lee Curtis have departed the platform.
“X has become effectively Truth Social premium,” said Mark Carrigan, author of Social Media for Academics, referring to Trump’s hard-right social media platform. And the talk in technology circles is that Trump’s Truth Social could be folded into X.
If that happens, whose interests take priority? Would Musk suppress criticism of the authoritarian governments he does business with, or promote it? In the Donald and Elon media show, who is the puppet or paymaster?
“If that happens, it will be the ultimate amplification machine for Trump’s ideas – a political super-app masquerading as social media,” said James Kirkham of Iconic, which advises brands including Uber and EA Sports on digital strategies. “Forget Facebook or Fox News; the true heart of the GOP’s digital strategy could be X.”"
