Le Monde, French newspaper of record, quits Elon Musk’s X

One of France's most prominent newspapers, Le Monde, is abandoning Elon Musk's X, the paper's editor-in-chief announced Monday.

In his editorial, Jérôme Fenoglio said the burgeoning alliance between U.S. President-elect Donald Trump and "social platform bosses" like Musk and Mark Zuckerberg poses a global threat to free access to reliable information.

Le Monde's move comes just hours before Trump is sworn in as the 47th president of the United States, and is in line with a fairly broad movement of institutions — including news organizations as well as prominent political officials — to leave X in France.

According to Fenoglio, Trump is at the forefront of a battle that pits facts against lies. "As a social network specifically focused on news, Twitter, renamed X, has always been a major player in this battle," Fenoglio said.

Fenoglio added that since Musk took over the company in 2022, the platform has become an extension of his political action.

Because of this "mixture of ideology and commerce," Le Monde's content became "more and more invisible," leading the company to reduce its publishing to an automated feed.

"But today, the intensification of Musk's activism, the officialization of his role within the Trumpist power apparatus, the growing toxicity of the exchanges, lead us to believe that the usefulness of our presence weighs less than the many side effects we suffer," he said.

"We have therefore decided to stop sharing our content on this network as long as it operates in this way, and we recommend that Le Monde journalists do the same. We will also redouble our vigilance on several other platforms, notably TikTok and Meta, following Mark Zuckerberg's worrying statements," Fenoglio added, referring to the Meta chief's recent political heel-turn.