At the request of the President of the Assembly Robert Rivas (D-Hollister), most Democrats in the California Assembly are leaving the social media platform of billionaire Elon Musk, a loyal of President Trump.
Rivas said Thursday that 58 of the 60 Democrats of the Assembly will stop, or have already stopped, sharing information and interacting with the components through their official government accounts in X, previously known as Twitter.
Rivas said the Exodus was promoted by concerns about the failure of the company in addressing an increase in erroneous information, false accounts and racist, sexist and antisemy posts.
“The hate speech is everywhere in X, the company has no responsibility, and the avalanche of erroneous information of false accounts is just that, false,” Rivas said in a statement. “I don't think taxpayers' resources should go to X”.
The Rivas office characterized the exodus as one of the largest exits of the elected officials of X.
The Democratic decision follows Trump's acceptance and the recent work of Musk to gut the federal workforce through his government efficiency department.
Some California legislators who have already left X faced criticism that they were not willing to interact with users who did not agree with their policies and policies.
The assembly Marc Berman (D-Menlo Park) left X more than a year ago. He said at that time that he took a short break after Musk reactivated the story of the Sandy Hook Alex Jones conspiracy, then discovered that the platform was not lost “at all.”
The assembly Tina McKinnor (D-Hawthorne) told her followers in a video in February that she left the platform because she had become “very hateful, very bad” and was full of wrong information.
In the other Chamber of California, the state senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) left X last month, citing “negative changes in increase”, including an increase in extremist content, spam positions and “strange changes to the algorithm”, which he had affected the commitment to publications about his work. The Senator of the San Diego Akilah Weber Pierson area (D-La Mesa) left X in December.
A Rivas spokesman said that the game was not a retirement from disagreement, but rather the decision to stop supporting a platform “surpassed by harmful misinformation, hate discourse, anti -Semitism and racism, and that is directed by someone who promotes this odious rhetoric.”
His office said the Democrats will continue to share information about other social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Tiktok.
“Democracy depends on the impartial information, not on the changing whims of a billionaire,” Rivas said.
The leader of the majority of the Assembly, Cecilia Aguiar-Curry (D-Winters), the main lieutenant of Rivas, said that Musk is not investing in moderation of content, which leads to “erroneous rampant information” that “endangers our friends and neighbors during emergencies.”
“It is irresponsible to continue encouraging our constituents to seek reliable public security information about X,” said Aguiar-Curry.
California legislators are not eliminating their accounts, so their old publications will remain available.
The Rivas office said it should be partly preventing people from passing by elected officials: if a user eliminates their X account, another person can claim the username 30 days later.
