Dear Elon, we’re out. The Tyee will no longer be posting to X (formerly Twitter) and we’ve removed the X sharing buttons from our stories.
Twitter was never perfect, but there was a time when the people who ran it invested resources in battling disinformation and protecting diverse voices from harassment and vitriol. That’s changed since the platform was purchased by Elon Musk, who has weaponized X to attack those who don’t agree with his extreme views.
No, X is not the “town square” for public discourse it claims to be. It’s a privately owned enclave whose master alters algorithms to suit his purposes. We’ve had to weigh whether the value of showing up on this still widely populated gathering space outweighs being complicit in the power it grants its owner and his agenda.
Opting out is the official stance of The Tyee as an organization. However, our journalists can continue to use X in their reporting and we leave it to each of them to make their personal decisions about whether to maintain X accounts. Many of our reporters have made the shift to Bluesky but find that maintaining an X account is still useful and needed for their work.
Readers of The Tyee who are users of X will, of course, still be able to share our articles.
The Tyee will keep our account on X but not post there. Another one of Musk’s changes to the platform has made it easier for anonymous users to impersonate official brands. We don’t want to leave that space open, so for now we’ll camp out on the Tyee handle.
If you’d like to find us on other social platforms, we’re regularly posting to Bluesky and Mastodon.
The best way to stay abreast of The Tyee’s daily offerings is to subscribe to one of our email newsletters. We offer, free of charge, daily and weekly versions collecting all our content, as well as national and Alberta-focused newsletters.
We are an independent, non-profit, reader-supported news organization without a paywall. If you would like to become a Tyee member who provides monthly or one-time financial support, we welcome you to the group of more than 10,000 Tyee Builders who already do. They are the reason we are able to make an impact every day. The independence their support grants us demands ethical responsibility — and underscores our decision that exiting X is the right thing to do.
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