Why St. Pauli left Elon Musk’s X

St. Pauli announced on Thursday morning their decision to leave X. Their reason? Elon Musk “has transformed X into a hate machine.”

Currently followed by 250,000 accounts, St. Pauli will no longer post on the social networking service, and have instead switched over to Bluesky, which has seen an influx of new downloads and users over the last 48 hours since Donald Trump’s return to office.

In a statement, St. Pauli said: “Since Musk took over Twitter, the platform’s former name, he has transformed X into a hate machine. Racism and conspiracy theories spread unhindered or are even curated. Insults and threats are rarely sanctioned and are sold as supposed freedom of expression.

“In addition, after his election victory, Donald Trump announced that he would make Musk the head of a newly created agency. Musk has already actively supported Trump during the election campaign, also with the help of X. It can be assumed that X will also promote authoritarian, misanthropic and right-wing extremist content in the federal election campaign and thus manipulate public discourse.”

It appears that St. Pauli are the first club to ditch X.

Guardian also announced on Wednesday that they would no longer post on X from its official accounts.

GGFN | Daniel Pinder