A “weapon” massive destruction of our democracies. She is like the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgohas described the social network Twitter) after announcing this Monday that he would stop using the platform. Hidalgo explains, in an article published today in the newspaper Le Mondethat at first Twitter was “a revolutionary tool” but currently “this social media and its owner, Elon Muskact deliberately to exacerbate tensions and conflicts“.
Hidalgo remembers that in 2009 she was one of the first French politicians to join that social network, in which she has 1.5 million followers, but denounces that since then x He has experienced a “list of drifts” that he considers “infinite.” “Handling, disinformationamplification of impulses hateorganized harassment, antisemitism and racism demonstrated, herds that attack scientists, climatologists, womenenvironmentalists, progressives and all those who seek serene political debate,” details the mayor. All of this, she adds, “without forgetting the daily foreign interference that interferes in electoral processes and that threatens our democracies by trying to destabilize them.”
“Immense sewer”
“Let’s not be mistaken. There is a very clear political project that wants to ignore democracy and its values in favor of powerful private interests,” insists Hidalgo. “With its thousands of anonymous accounts and its ‘troll farms‘, what happens in X is not democratic life but exactly its opposite,” he adds. For Hidalgo, now “the controversies, rumors and manipulations crude ideas dictate public debate, propelled by X’s algorithm, where only the number of ‘likes’ counts. What do facts matter?
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Since Elon Musk took control of Twitter in October 2022, several celebrities have announced their departure, including the American model Gigi Hadid a month later, but there has been no mass movement. Some politicians have announced that they are opening accounts on competing networks, including the European commissioner Thierry Breton for Blueskybut without abandoning X.
This platform and its owner are “deliberately hindering the information necessary to carry out the transformation that we need in the world,” adds Hidalgo, concluding with a call to the political world: “This medium has become an immense global sewer and we must continue rushing into it.” The mayor has announced that she will continue “in other social networks where respectful dialogue still exists”. In any case, it encourages citizens to immerse themselves in “real democracy”, that of municipal councils, meetings or conferences, with real discussions between people.