Top French Newspaper Ditches X Over 'Growing Toxicity,' Threatens to Leave Meta Next

Top French newspaper Le Monde is leaving X, formerly known as Twitter, over the social media platform's "growing toxicity" and ties to President Donald Trump.

Editor-in-Chief Jérôme Fenoglio, who has been with the paper since 1991, announced the update in a sweeping editorial published Monday. He denounced "media and social platform bosses," including Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos for aligning themselves with Trump, whose "distinctive traits" are "lies, violence, manipulation, blackmail, cynicism, selfishness, sexism, racism, hatred of law and institutions."

Although Le Monde has already reduced its presence on X by automating its feed, Fenoglio said its content became "more and more invisible" as a "mixture of ideology and commerce" has overtaken the platform since Musk bought it in 2022. He further stated the newspaper can't stand by as Musk continues to ingratiate himself with the Trump administration.

"But today, the intensification of Musk's activism, the officialization of his role within the Trumpist power apparatus, the growing toxicity of the exchanges, lead us to believe that the usefulness of our presence weighs less than the many side effects we suffer," Fenoglio wrote.

"We have therefore decided to stop sharing our content on this network as long as it operates in this way, and we recommend that Le Monde journalists do the same. We will also redouble our vigilance on several other platforms, notably TikTok and Meta, following Mark Zuckerberg's worrying statements," he added.

Weeks after donating $1 million to Trump's inauguration fund, Zuckerberg announced Meta is ending its third-party fact-checking program and replacing it with a community notes feature similar to X. He defended the move by critiquing "governments and legacy media" for pushing "to censor more and more."

Originally published by Latin Times