Following internal discussions between the editorial team, and consultations with its council for upholding journalistic ethics and independence, the Société des journalistes, Mediapart has decided to end all activity on X as of January 20th 2025. That is the date of Donald Trump’s investiture ceremony as 47th president of the United States, a man who has described journalists as the “enemy of the American people”. The date will also mark when Elon Musk takes up his appointment in Trump’s government as head of a Department of Government Efficiency.
Mediapart has reported on the fascist danger that this new presidency represents not only in Trump’s own country, but also the whole of the European continent. We have also reported on how Musk used his social media to try and steer the world into a new era, one of information chaos, and how he manipulated users of X at the service of his political camp, telling them immediately after Trump’s election victory that “You are the media now”, clearly marking his will to see journalism disappear.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
As part of the media landscape, Mediapart has a historic battle to lead in defending our mission of serving the general interest, one which consists of seeking out the truth of events, cross-checking facts and accounts, and producing information that has been properly verified and documented. To help guarantee democratic debate worthy of the name, our responsibility is to fight against the circulation of false information, which is a poison that produces inequality and hate, and opens up warring divisions.
“The moment we no longer have a free press, anything can happen,” warned the late German-American historian, philosopher and political theorist Hannah Arendt in a 1974 interview with French writer Roger Errera, published in The New York Review of Books. “What makes it possible for a totalitarian or any other dictatorship to rule is that people are not informed; how can you have an opinion if you are not informed? If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer.” At a time when the ideology of the far-right forms an alliance with the tech industry to produce an Orwellian dystopia, where peace is war, where freedom is a slave, and where borders tumble between truth and fiction, we cannot pretend not to see anything going on.
As a counterpower among others, we oppose this overturning of values. That implies that first and foremost we refuse to be enclosed within the framework chosen by the enemies of pluralism and the freedom to inform.
Reaching out to all
By remaining, we would be legitimizing their space and weapons in face of those who are most precious to us, namely our readers; those who are most loyal but also, more widely, those who show an interest, including some far away, in our reporting, to discuss and – why not? – challenge it.
If we stayed further on this platform that has become dangerous, we would be encouraging our readers to catch up with our posts there, and we would be placing them in danger of being exposed to disinformation, harassment, and the capture of their data. By feeding the X algorithm, we would be contributing to a machine that destroys us, and helping with the creation of monsters.
We do not regard those who use X in the same light that we do Musk. Mediapart addresses itself to everyone, without exception. More than ever, we are committed to making Mediapart accessible to greatest number, to share our coverage and to make our voice heard beyond our subscribers. For that, our strategy is to increase our presence on other social media and to multiply the public events we hold around France in which we encourage people to come along and meet us.
More than ever, we stand against the cosy spaces where the socially smug and the similarly minded gather among their own, and today that bubble is X. Furthermore, while we are happy to be challenged, X has become a prison, a place of submission, and we do not accept that a far-right user tries to silence us.
It is time to say goodbye to this platform which, in a distant time, represented the hope of an internet controlled by its users, an internet that champions equality and a shared access to knowledge, the same internet into which Mediapart was launched in 2008 upon its creation. Since then, the ecosystem has changed and the networks have diversified. Extractivist capitalism has turned knowledge into its latest target for boring, and the web giants will exploit it until it dries up.
Building a “digital street”
We are well aware of the limits concerning the alternatives to X, and we have reported on some of the wayward examples. Meanwhile, it is difficult to know what will become of Bluesky, Threads, Instagram, LinkedIn or TikTok. More easily imaginable is that Mastodon will remain endurably operational, because of its decentralized architecture and the differentiation of its moderation rules according to the server interconnections, like that created by Mediapart one year ago.
What we do know is that between the more or less perishable platforms and X, there exists a difference of nature and not degree. Musk’s platform is now in the hands of the worst ideology, that of white supremacy, and which has found representation in the world’s largest economic and military power. To this day, there is no known equivalent to its destructive potential.
Unlike certain media, whose survival depends upon the communities they have patiently built up, Mediapart has the option of choice. Our economic model, founded on the exclusive financial support of our subscribers, is in no way subjected to algorithms.
We have decided to take part in the creation of a new “digital street”, along with those (journalists, academics, public rights activists and trades unions) who like us have decided to leave X on January 20th. It is a move above all that joins citizens in resisting the attacks against democracy and contributes to building passageways rather than walls.
In practice, the official accounts of Mediapart will cease posting on X on January 20th. Mediapart’s staff, including its journalists, will remain free to choose their personal position on the matter. Until then, we invite our subscribers to join us on Mastodon or Bluesky. You can access the Mediapart Club section, the space for free debate among subscribers, here on Mastodon, and here on Bluesky.
To create an account on Mastodon, we recommend you do so via Piaille.fr, a secure pathway open to everyone.
We remain at your side, and we will come back with further information in the coming days, while we prepare the exit from X. Let’s put true information back into the centre of public debate.
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- The original French version of thos article can be found here.
English version by Graham Tearse