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During 23 years with The BBC, and a 41 year journalistic career (when he was trained to use clear and simple language, avoiding jargon), for our Editor, Welshman Phil Parry reporting the potential downfall of famous people has always been paramount, and now this is highlighted by the news that many have deserted Elon Musk’s controversial social media platform, with one UK media outlet asking if it could now be the end for ‘X’.
It is always good to find support.
The spotlight has been thrown on this salient fact by Sky News, with the news that Jamie Lee Curtis, The Guardian, and even Clifton Suspension Bridge have joined swathes of people deserting Elon Musk’s social media site X.
They have reported this desertion beneath the headline: “The X exodus – could Bluesky spike spark end of Elon Musk’s social media platform?”.
‘Bluesky’ refers to a site run by the Twitter founder Jack Dorsey that has a stronger focus on moderation. According to the official Bluesky account, a million people joined the platform in just one day, after Mr Musk was given a position in Donald Trump’s government.
He is to become co-leader of the US “Department of Government Efficiency”, and has declared that federal spending can be cut by $2 trillion, or about a third.
When Mr Musk bought Twitter in October 2022, he cut roughly 80 per cent of the company’s workforce, and it has faced a series of challenges since then. Figures have shown that at one point the monthly US ad revenue at X had declined at least 55 per cent year-on-year each month since he bought it. The company has struggled to retain some advertisers since the takeover, and the Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Linda Yaccarino, met bank lenders who helped finance Mr Musk’s acquisition to outline the company’s business plans.
In The Times, writer Janice Turner declared: “Elon Musk sits astride Twitter/X as the living embodiment of all that is screwed up and vile about his site…so now the question for users is why stay?”.
So it is that I am pleased we have taken the action at The Eye that we have. Previously all our stories were posted on X automatically, but now only Facebook (FB) is used. Of course, I am under no illusions that our stance is likely to make any difference whatsoever – X is still (even after leading firms pulled their advertising), a gigantic business.
I know that The Eye not using X will almost certainly have no impact at all, but it seemed the right thing to do.
i am not alone either, it seems, and Mr Musk’s site has attracted more than its fair share of controversy.
For example, a contentious comment by him on X that “civil war is inevitable”, highlighted what a problematic figure he is.
Mr Musk’s inflammatory announcement during the riots, showed him with a video in Liverpool, but a spokesperson for Sir Keir Starmer said the violence came from a small minority of people who “do not speak for Britain”, and the Prime Minister did not share the sentiments of the billionaire, who has been criticised for allowing far-right figures back on to his social media platform.
The spokesperson added: “There’s no justification for comments like that. What we’ve seen in this country is organised, violent thuggery that has no place, either on our streets or online”.
Mr Musk also shared a video of a person purportedly being arrested for offensive comments online, asking: “Is this Britain or the Soviet Union?”, and replied to a post criticising UK policing, suggesting the police’s response “does seem one-sided“.
He shared, too, a fake Daily Telegraph article claiming Sir Keir was considering sending far-right rioters to “emergency detainment camps” in the Falklands. Mr Musk deleted his post after about 30 minutes but a screenshot captured by Politics.co.uk suggests it had garnered nearly two million views before it was deleted.
In it, he shared an image posted by the co-leader of the far-right group Britain First, Ashlea Simon, which she captioned with, “we’re all being deported to the Falklands”. The fake piece, purportedly written by a senior news reporter for the Daily Telegraph and mocked up in the newspaper’s style, said camps in the Falklands “would be used to detain prisoners from the ongoing riots as the British prison system is already at capacity”.
Yet Mr Musk’s remarks and endorsements have not simply been opposed by the UK Government. The head of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), Stephen Parkinson, declared that his interventions over the riots were: “deeply unhelpful”.
Mr Musk seems to have unlikely backers too. For instance the extreme right wing activist Tommy Robinson appears to be a supporter of his.
Mr Robinson served four prison terms between 2005 and 2019, and in 2021 was found to have libelled a 15-year-old refugee at a school in Huddersfield. He was ordered to pay £100,000 plus legal costs, but after breaching an injunction about repeating the libel, Mr Robinson was sentenced to 18 months in prison.
A post by Mr Musk included a Family Guy meme featuring its main character in the electric chair, alongside the words: “In 2030 for making a Facebook comment that the UK government didn’t like”. Mr Robinson reposted it with the comment: “If it wasn’t for Elon Musk. The government and legacy media would’ve had me hung, drawn and quartered, without reply, over their failings”.
The present controversy shines the spotlight on previous information about Mr Musk. He has been described by his daughter as a ‘cruel and absent father’, and major firms boycotted his social media site after allegedly anti-Semitic remarks.
Mr Musk had supposedly agreed with a post on X that falsely claimed Jewish or other people were stoking hatred against white people.
He said that the user who referenced the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory was speaking “the actual truth”. The conspiracy theory holds that Jews or others are engineering the ethnic and cultural replacement of white populations that will lead to a “white genocide”. It has also been spouted during the riots, with Jews replaced by Muslims.
Major firms including Disney, Warner Bros and Sky News’ parent company Comcast pulled their advertising, and Lions Gate Entertainment as well as Paramount Global also said they were pausing advertising. It was reported that Apple was pulling ads too. IBM also halted its advertising on X after a report by Media Matters (MM), the US media watchdog, found that its ads were placed next to pro neo-Nazi content.
These are only the latest difficulties to face Mr Musk (along now with questions being asked in the media about the future of his social media site), and he has always possessed a well-known propensity to turn to the law to resolve them. Indeed it has been revealed that a not-for-profit organisation was forced to close, because it was presented with a lawsuit from Mr Musk.
It was claimed on X that the advertising group Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM), illegally conspired to boycott advertising on his platform, but the statement had huge ramifications.
“GARM is a small, not-for-profit initiative, and recent allegations that unfortunately misconstrue its purpose and activities have caused a distraction and significantly drained its resources and finances”, the group said in a statement, adding: “GARM therefore is making the difficult decision to discontinue its activities”.
It has also emerged that Mr Musk has sued MM alleging it manufactured the report showing advertisers’ posts alongside neo-Nazi content. In a lawsuit filed in the US District Court in Texas, it was claimed that MM “knowingly and maliciously” portrayed ads next to hateful material “as if they were what typical X users experience on the platform”.
The extraordinary comments in The Times, the accusation of anti-Semitism, and questions now in the media about whether it could be the end for X put Mr Musk’s headline-grabbing views in context, but he has always denied that he is against Jews. He has, for instance, proclaimed: “To be super clear: I am pro free speech, but against anti-Semitism of any kind“.
However to Mr Musk’s critics this is pure humbug because he has described George Soros (a survivor of the Holocaust, and a frequent victim of anti-Semitic attacks), as ‘reminding him of Magneto’ (a Marvel comic villain who is also a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust).
Mr Musk has also engaged in a very public spat with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which is a high-profile organisation opposing anti-Semitism and racism. He has threatened the ADL with legal action, blaming it for a collapse in advertising revenue, when it could, in fact, be to do with the nervousness of companies associating with him.
With this background, the action which has been taken by The Eye appears to be being endorsed now by others who are also turning away from X, including a Hollywood star and Clifton Suspension Bridge.
Others may follow…
The memories of Phil’s, decades long award-winning career in journalism (when news questioning the future of well-known organisations was always reported) as he was gripped by the rare neurological disease Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia (HSP), have been released in a major book ‘A GOOD STORY’. Order it now!
‘X marks the spot part two’ comes soon where Phil examines his claim that he can cut millions of dollars from the federal budget, with his new job in Donald Trump’s government.
