Socialist Mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo announced on Monday that she was deleting her account on the “Destabilization of Democracy” social network.
“I have made the decision to leave X. “Far from being the revolutionary tool that originally gave the largest possible number of people, democracies, access to information,” she wrote in a column in the newspaper Le Monde. Anne Hidalgo registered on Twitter in 2009.
However, the city of Paris’s account remains on X, the city hall told the AFP news agency.
“Manipulation, disinformation, amplifying hate impulses, organized harassment, proven anti-Semitism and racism, mobs attacking scientists, climatologists, women, ecologists, progressives and all of good will who want peaceful political debate and appeasement in an increasingly complex world. “: The list of abuses is endless,” adds the elected socialist, who also denounces an algorithm “where only the number of likes counts.”
Since Elon Musk took over Twitter in October 2022, several personalities have announced their departure, including American model Gigi Hadid a month later, but there has been no massive movement.
Several politicians have announced the opening of accounts on rival networks, including EU Commissioner Thierry Breton for Bluesky, but without leaving X.
However, some organizations have taken the step, such as the American public radio station NPR or recently the German anti-discrimination agency, but also researchers and climate experts, whose activity on the social network has declined sharply, according to a study published in August.
This platform and its owner are “intentionally hindering (…) the information necessary to begin the radical ecological and energy transformation we need, for the benefit of climate-skeptical discourses promoted by fossil fuel interests,” Ms. added . Hidalgo concludes with an appeal to the political world: “This media has become a huge global sewer, and should we continue to plunge into it?”