MSNBC host Joy Reid and former CNN host Don Lemon announced their exits from the social media site X Wednesday, with the latter saying it was “time to leave.”
Reid posted a video on TikTok and Instagram Wednesday announcing her departure from X, while Lemon made his announcement via both a video and a written statement posted to the social media site. Reid claimed she had not posted on X in “a long time” but used it for newsgathering.
“Hey, guys. So, today I finally did something I’ve been meaning to do for a while,” Reid said in the video, which cut to a screenshot of Reid deactivating her account on X. “And, um, the reason for doing it and kissing goodbye my 1.9 million followers over there is because I hadn’t been posting for a long time, I just didn’t want to contribute content once it was purchased by its present owner.”
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“But just having it there, I was only holding on to it, um, because I, you know, really didn’t want someone trying to take over that name and using it for nefarious purposes,” Reid claimed. “I was a little bit worried about that. Um, and I every so often I would use it to just like sort of look at news that was trending and what’s happening, and I would just sorta use it as an aggregator, but I just realized it’s not worth it. Because in order to do the news aggregation and just look at all, you have to wade through a lot of drek and a lot of just abuse, and a lot of negativity, it’s just not worth it.”
Lemon also left the site, claiming that a change in the terms of service was the final straw for him.
“I once believed it was a place for honest discussion and debate, transparency and free speech, but I now feel it does not serve that purpose,” Lemon claimed, citing a Nov. 10 Washington Post report on the site’s new terms of service.
The Guardian, a British media outlet, also announced it would no longer actively post on the site Wednesday, claiming in an editorial that Musk turned the site into a “toxic media platform” where “racism” and “conspiracy theories” were allowed. The Center for Countering Digital Hate, a British-based non-profit, later announced its departure from X Thursday, citing the site’s new terms of service, Reuters reported.
Musk closed the deal to purchase Twitter for $44 billion in October 2022, seeking to create a “common digital town square” on the site, according to the Wall Street Journal. Musk endorsed former President Donald Trump after Trump survived a July 13 assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania.
TokTok users who commented on the MSNBC host’s video suggested she join BlueSky, a competing social network that gained over one million users since President-elect Donald Trump defeated Vice President Kamala Harris.
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