2023-11-27 14:27:09
“Why I’m leaving Twitter”. Clear and forceful. This is how the mayor of Paris, the Spanish-French Anne Hidalgo, expressed herself this Monday on X (formerly Twitter). And that’s how one of her publications on this platform also started, in which she explains the reasons that led her to make the decision. The main one, for being “a weapon of mass destruction of our democracies.”
“I have made the decision to leave Twitter,” he announced to his more than one and a half million followers. Joined this platform in March 2009 – “I was one of the first French politicians to join,” she alleges – and now, almost 15 years later, there has been an “endless list of abuses” that have led her to want to leave: “Manipulation, misinformation, amplification of impulses of hate, organized harassment, anti-Semitism and demonstrated racism”, in addition to “packs that attack scientists, climatologists, women, environmentalists, progressives,” Hidalgo listed. Without forgetting, she insists, “the daily foreign interference that interferes in electoral processes and damages the image and sovereignty of our democracies by trying to destabilize them.”
In the opinion of the first Parisian mayor, “far from being the revolutionary tool which, initially, allowed access to information to the greatest number of people, Twitter – it insists on calling X that way – has become in recent years the weapon of mass destruction of our democracies.
A social network, that of Elon Musk -whom he accuses of “acting deliberately to exacerbate tensions and conflicts”-, plagued by “controversies, rumors and crude manipulations” in which, thanks to his algorithm, “only the number of ‘Likes’ counts” leaving aside the real facts, Hidalgo denounces.
Why I’m leaving Twitter.
I have made the decision to leave Twitter.
Far from being the revolutionary tool which, initially, allowed access to information for the greatest number of people, Twitter has in recent years become the weapon of mass destruction of our democracies.… pic.twitter.com/MrZaywMm4k
— Anne Hidalgo (@Anne_Hidalgo) November 27, 2023
«We can constantly deny, deny and explain, but the noise generated by fake news “It will always be much greater than the echo of a well-founded truth,” he laments.
He then calls on the community ofa very clear political project who wants to do without democracy and its values in favor of powerful private interests.”
“Troll farms”
Hidalgo, as mayor of Paris since 2014, has always been very committed to the ecological transition of our societies. In this sense, he continues his exposition of reasons for leaving climate, promoted by fossil fuel interests and unlimited predation of the planet«.
X has become “a huge global sewer«. »Should we continue rushing into it?«, he asks. The social network prevents debate, the search for truth and serious and constructive dialogue, she believes, as a result of the thousands of anonymous accounts, which are nothing more than “troll farms.” It is for all of the above that, she explains, »I refuse to support this disastrous design«.
A faithful believer in democracy, Hidalgo is committed to “not letting ourselves be intimidated by abject destabilization” or “by allowing the ‘chaos engineers’ take control of our destinies.” But, above all, the mayor of the French capital advocates »not allowing our democracies to disintegrate every day on our screens«.
For all of the above and “for stay true to my convictions and my commitment«, he concludes, »today I am leaving Twitter«. Not before ending his publication by quoting the famous American activist, Martin Luther King: »We must learn to live together as brothers, otherwise we will all die together like idiots«.
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