Twitter CEO Elon Musk has condemned the Australia Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) for exiting the platform, accusing the broadcaster of embracing censorship.
The ABC’s managing director, David Anderson, announced on Wednesday that the broadcaster would discontinue the majority of its accounts on X—formerly known as Twitter—for “multiple reasons,” including high costs and “toxic interactions” online.
“The Australian public does not,” he said on Aug. 9.
‘Toxic Interactions’
The government-funded broadcaster will now only have four Twitter accounts, including ABC News, ABC Sport, ABC Chinese and ABC Australia. It has already closed three program accounts for Insiders, News Breakfast and ABC Politics in February, a move that Mr. Anderson said had produced “positive” results.Mr. Anderson said that staff can channel their focus on “the accounts that overwhelmingly provide the most value.”
“The vast majority of the ABC’s social media audience is located on official sites on Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, with TikTok forecast to have the strongest growth over the next four years.”
Mr. Anderson argued that closing individual program accounts “helps limit the exposure of team members to the toxic interactions that unfortunately are becoming more prevalent on X.”
“Concerningly, X has reduced its trust and safety teams.”
ABC Blames Twitter’s Increasing Cost
Mr. Anderson added that the social media platform is “introducing charges which make the platform increasingly costly to use.” The additional charges came in after Mr. Musk took over the platform in October 2022.Since then, he had rolled out a number of changes in the company and its policies, as well as launched Twitter-verified blue checkmarks as a paid service.
The Space X founder has also shared a cryptic message saying that “the downfall of the Freemasons was giving away their stonecutting services for nothing.”
This included an additional $103.8 million (US$67.9 million) over five years to extend three programs and $8.5 million over four years to expand transmission infrastructure in the Pacific.
In October 2022, ABC received another $32 million (US$20.94 million) to expand its regional transmission, content production, and media capacity training in the Indo-Pacific.
As the ABC is a critical news source for those living in rural and regional areas, the broadcaster’s decision to abandon its Twitter account will likely make it harder for regional Australians to access the news.
“I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spambots, and authenticating all humans,” he said while touting the platform’s “tremendous potential.”
