Labour MPs have begun quitting X in alarm over the platform, with one saying Elon Musk had turned it into “a megaphone for foreign adversaries and far-right fringe groups”.

Over the weekend, newly elected MPs took to WhatsApp groups to raise growing concerns about the role X played in the spread of misinformation amid the far-right-led riots in parts of England and Northern Ireland.

Two Labour MPs are known to have told colleagues they were leaving the platform. One of them, Noah Law, has disabled his account. Other MPs who still use X have begun examining alternatives, including Threads, which is owned by Facebook’s parent company, Meta, and the open-source platform Bluesky.

In an article for the Guardian on Monday, a former Twitter executive, Bruce Daisley, said Musk should face personal sanctions and even an arrest warrant if he continues to stir up public disorder online.

  • @[email protected]
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    1221 month ago

    No shit. The amount of far-right propaganda, hate and disinformation it’s pushing is so much that it’s pretty much over the line as an extremist site now, and I expect it to start getting flagged as that with a lot more organisations.

    Musk wants to set the world on fire and X is his box of matches.

    • @[email protected]
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      231 month ago

      How powerful a tool X is depends on how much legitimacy it can gain. If politicians are leaving the platform it can’t be long before advertisers also leave. I’m old enough to remember Myspace. Even Facebook is a bit pacé nowadays.

      • @shalafi
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        121 month ago
        • passé

        Or is that a language I don’t know?

      • @xenoclast
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        81 month ago

        I think you mean Twitter

      • @[email protected]
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        41 month ago

        Advertisers have been leaving since Musk bought it. He might have wooed some back but not on the same terms as before.

    • @xenoclast
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      101 month ago

      I think you mean Twitter.