Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy has confirmed she and her department are quitting Elon Musk's X platform, lashing out at it for allowing "abuse and misinformation" to spread. The Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) will no longer post on the platform, formerly known as Twitter.
Nandy's Announcement
In a scathing post to her 302,000 followers, Nandy wrote: "I've decided to leave this platform and my Department will too. A platform originally designed for free speech and expression now favours abuse and misinformation over meaningful debate. It isn't healthy for our democracy or our communities and I don’t want to support it." The message was reposted by DCMS, making it the largest government department to quit the platform so far, although several individual ministers and MPs have announced their own boycotts.
Broader Government Exodus
Last month, Attorney General Richard Hermer ordered his office to stop posting on X due to concerns that the site was being used to incite violence and racism. The decision followed widespread disorder in Southampton, where protesters clashed with police after the Henry Nowak murder sentencing. Former safeguarding minister Jess Phillips, who left X about 18 months ago, told Times Radio: "Lisa Nandy's mental health is about to get better and I absolutely agree with what Lisa Nandy has said. It is very very difficult when you have the people or the person who owns that platform talking up potential terrible stuff on the streets of our country and then for government departments to remain on it."
Criticism of Elon Musk
Billionaire Musk has repeatedly been accused of inciting division in Britain, including a claim last year that civil war was "inevitable." Last month, Prime Minister Keir Starmer told reporters: "We need to also assert who we are as a country, because Musk, again, has been interfering in our politics in the last few days, trying to whip up division – that is not who we are in Britain." Other government departments, including No10, have so far declined to quit X, but No10 has a fractious relationship with the platform. Earlier this year, X's AI chatbot Grok allowed nudified pictures of children to be generated by users, prompting a bitter row. Musk later backed down and made changes to the function.
Calls for Government to Leave X
There have been growing calls for the government to stop using X. In January, former Transport Secretary Louise Haigh said: "I have not personally used X/Twitter for some time now. It was already an unpleasant place prior to its takeover by Elon Musk, but since his acceptance of hate speech and anonymous online abusers, it has become utterly unusable. However, the revelations around the enablement, if not encouragement, of child sexual abuse mean it is unconscionable to use the site for another minute."
