• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, November 13, 2024

Publishers are lining up against X, the former Twitter, at least in Europe.

The Guardian announced to its readers that it will no longer post official Guardian editorial on X. 

“We think that the benefits of being on X are now outweighed by the negatives and that resources could be better used promoting our journalism elsewhere,” writes Jennifer A. Maguire, business communications, The Guardian. 

Maguire continues, “This is something we have been considering for a while given the often disturbing content promoted or found on the platform, including far-right conspiracy theories and racism. The US presidential election campaign served only to underline what we have considered for a long time: that X is a toxic media platform and that its owner, Elon Musk, has been able to use its influence to shape political discourse.”

Now this is not going to lead to the collapse of X. More threatening, perhaps, is the fact that several French newspapers are suing X for allegedly running their content without payment, as The Guardian reports in a separate news article. 

The periodicals include Le Figaro, Les Echos, Le Parisien and Le Monde, along with Telerama, Courrier International, HuffPost, Malesherbes Publications and the Nouvel Obs news weekly.

They charge that X violated “neighboring rights” that apply when social media platforms republish news, The Guardian reports,

These publications and Agence France-Presse had asked for an emergency injunction earlier this year, and in May a Paris tribunal gave X two months to provide data that would allow insight into the income earned from using this content. 

But the publishers contend in their new action that X has not complied. 

As for The Guardian itself, McGuire adds that “X users will still be able to share our articles, and the nature of live news reporting means we will still occasionally embed content from X within our article pages.”

In addition, Guardian reporters will also be able to carry on using the site for news-gathering purposes, just as they use other social networks in which we do not officially engage.”