Yesterday, The Guardian announced it would no longer post news on X (formerly Twitter) and moved to Blue Sky. It will continue to use the platform for news gathering.
“We wanted to let readers know that we will no longer post on any official Guardian editorial accounts on the social media site X (formerly Twitter).
“We think that the benefits of being on X are now outweighed by the negatives and that resources could be better used promoting our journalism elsewhere,” a Guardian editorial stated.
“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 Guardian editorial said.
Many have commented on Blue Sky that Elon Musk is ‘throttling’ accounts on X that mention Blue Sky.
The day after the US election on November 6, Musk’s X suffered a massive user exodus. At the same time, Blue Sky started experiencing rapid growth. This followed an earlier influx of new users to Blue Sky after a Brazilian judge banned X.
Blue Sky, as of yesterday (US time) had gained 1.25 million new users.
US news outlet NBC reported that: “David Carr, the editor of news insights and research at Similarweb, provided NBC News with data that confirmed that during the presidential election, X got the most traffic it has all year. But the day after, Nov. 6, X also saw 115,414 account deactivations, the most it has gotten since Musk took ownership of the site [2022], the research found.”
Many people on X commented for months that it appeared since Musk bought X, certain accounts, such as Joe Rogan, Alex Jones, Avi Yemini and Tommy Robinson, among others, were being ‘pumped up’ whilst other accounts were being throttled.
This is borne out by the fact our X account has 4,000 followers, but there is little engagement. Yet, within 24 hours of moving to Blue Sky, with 300 followers, site traffic to VicNews grew rapidly, suggesting Musk’s manipulation of algorithms.
A journalist for The Guardian, Greg Jericho, said on Blue Sky: “This is brilliant (dirty secret – f**k all readership comes from Twitter), referring to The Guardian‘s decision to leave X.
Musk has also updated the terms and conditions (T&Cs) at X, which come into effect November 15, (Sat. November 16, 11am AEST) that will allow Musk to scrape everyone’s X account. Musk will then own that data and be able to use it any way he sees fit for his Grok AI or any other purpose.
In the US, National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) left X following Musk’s acquisition of the social media platform in 2022.
We won’t be deleting our X account as this could allow someone else to use our ‘handle’ (name) and pretend to be us. VicNews spoke to several cyber experts, who recommended leaving your X account as is and simply no longer using it. Deleting it could be problematic and allow someone else to identify as you.
The cyber experts recommended downloading data – your posts and DMs – from X and then deleting all the data but leaving your account in place so it can not be ‘grabbed’ by others.
Our X account @geelanmedia will no longer be used by 11am (AEST) on Saturday, November 16.
Let that sink in.
Elon Musk did not respond to several requests for comment.
