St Pauli quits X social media platform

Admin I Friday, Nov. 2024

 

HAMBURG-  St Pauli Hamburg has decided to leave the social media platform X, citing as a reason that Elon Musk, the owner of the microblogging platform, has turned it into a “hate amplifier.”

“Elon Musk has turned a space for debate into a hate amplifier that could also influence the Bundestag elections,” the Bundesliga club said in a statement.

The collapse of the German three-party coalition after finance minister Christian Lindner was dismissed by Chancellor Olaf Scholz last week has paved the way for elections on February 23 instead of September 28 as regularly scheduled.

“Since the takeover of Twitter, formerly the name of the platform, by Musk, he has transformed X into a hate machine. Racism and conspiracy theories are spreading unchecked or even being curated. Insults and threats are scarcely sanctioned and are being considered freedom of speech,” St Pauli wrote.

The club pointed out that Musk has already “strongly supported” Donald Trump in his successful campaign in the United States elections and “it can be assumed that X will also promote authoritarian, misanthropic and right-wing extremist content in the federal election campaign, thereby manipulating public discourse.”

St Pauli had been active on X since 2013 and currently have more than 250,000 followers. Their X account won’t be deleted, but the club will now be active on BlueSky, a platform with similar features to X.