French newspaper Le Monde announced on Monday that it will no longer be posting content on X, citing Donald Trump’s newfound friendship with X owner Elon Musk.
In a lengthy editorial to its website, Director of Le Monde Jérôme Fenoglio laid out the publication’s issues with both Trump and Musk, saying that the latter has turned X “into an extension of his political cause, a form of libertarianism increasingly close to the far right.” As a result, Fenoglio says, Le Monde became “increasingly invisible” on the platform, prompting an automated feed.
“Today, however, the intensification of Musk’s activism, the formalization of his position within the Trump power apparatus and the increasing toxicity of the exchanges led us to come to the conclusion that the usefulness of our presence weighs less than the many suffered side-effects,” Fenoglio wrote on Monday.
“We have therefore decided to stop sharing our content on this platform for as long as it operates in this way and to recommend that Le Monde journalists do the same.”
Fenoglio added that Le Monde will “also increase our vigilance on several other platforms, notably TikTok and Meta, following Mark Zuckerberg’s worrying statements,” after the Meta CEO also aligned with Trump and attended his inauguration.
“This unprecedented alliance not only poses a major threat to U.S. democracy, the devastating consequences of which Montesquieu foresaw, but also a far-reaching confusion between general and private interests,” Fenoglio said.
“Made up of media and social platform owners, this ‘oligarchy’ of ‘extreme wealth, power and influence,’ in the words of outgoing president Joe Biden on January 15, who was unsuccessful in opposing it, also represents a global threat to free access to reliable information.”
