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Australian broadcaster ABC has shut down the majority of its accounts on X, formerly known as Twitter, citing cost and increase of toxic interactions since Elon Musk took over.
As of Wednesday 9 August, only @abcnews, @abcsport, @abchinese, and @abcaustralia remain active on the social media platform.
Managing Director David Anderson said ABC’s move is meant to reduce cost and negative exposure to their team members. Anderson also announced that the national broadcaster will reallocate their resources into other platforms such as Youtube and TikTok.
“The vast majority of the ABC’s social media audience is located on other platforms and we want to focus our effort and resources where our audiences are.
“Also, we have found that closing individual program accounts helps limit the exposure of team members to the sometimes toxic interactions that unfortunately are becoming more prevalent. Concerningly, X has reduced its trust and safety teams.”
Additional charges being introduced by X had also made the platform “increasingly costly to use”, Mr Anderson said.
The discontinued accounts will remain accessible, but will no longer be updated. Instead, they will have pinned posts redirecting users to where they can access updated information.
In response to ABC’s move, Musk had this to say: “Well of course they prefer censorship-friendly social media. The Australian public does not.”
In April, X earned the ire of several public broadcasters after the platform slapped a “government-funded media” tag on their profiles. This includes ABS and SBS, another publicly-funded broadcaster.
In response, US-based NPR and PBS deactivated their platforms, saying the tag implied that governments had a significant level of control over their editorial policies.
“NPR will no longer actively maintain its flagship Twitter (@NPR) or any other official NPR accounts, and we are officially deemphasizing Twitter across the organisation,” the NPR said in a statement.
“We believe this label is intended to call in question our editorial independence and undermine our credibility. If we continued tweeting, every post would carry that misleading label,” they said.
At the time, ABC said it was not going to follow suit, preferring instead to work with the platform to get a more accurate designation.
X has since removed the tag.
