Green Party vow to no longer use X - 'It's turned into a cesspit'
The Green Party will no longer post on X, formerly known as Twitter .
Green Party Councillor for Ballyfermot-Drimnagh Ray Cunningham has announced that his party has made the decision to consciously step away from the social media platform. He said a “lack of moderation” and the promotion of “far right racist politics” has turned it into a “cesspit.”
“We had planned to just quiet quit and phase out posting over a couple of months. But, over the last couple of weeks, X has gotten drastically worse,” Cllr Cunningham explained.
While Twitter used to be a melting pot of journalists, politicians, and individuals all sharing current events and breaking news in real time, ever since it was taken over by entrepreneur Elon Musk and rebranded as X in 2022 it has experienced a slow exodus of users. With its status as a legitimate news source deteriorating due to the spread of false information, the Green Party is just one of many organisations who have bid farewell to the platform.
Cllr Cunningham’s announcement coincides with the latest X controversy, which has seen its AI chatbot Grok editing images of women and children in their underwear and even without clothes. This sharing of sexually explicit content led to the Irish media regulator Comisiun na Mean stating they are engaging with the European Union regarding the legality of the platform.
These proliferating of this content saw fellow Green Party member Cllr Hazel Chu urge gardai intervention to seize any deepfake sexually explicit content on Irish servers. "That needs to be confiscated by the gardai," she said.
“The chatbot there is producing content that is both illegal and obscene and doing it on demand. The company is not taking any steps to stop this or to punish users that are involved,” Cllr Cunningham said.
“In fact, this is just the latest step in a path Elon Musk clearly wants to follow. The Green Party can’t turn a blind eye and it can't condone it by continuing to post there.”
Cllr Cunning stressed that Green leader Roderic O’Gorman, and the entire party “are done with X.” “I believe this is the right thing to do,” he said. He accepted that this decision comes with the loss of all the followers they had built up over the years and asked that people show their support for this decision by following them on other social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok.
When contacted for comment regarding to use of illegal deepfake images on X, a spokesperson stated: "We take action against illegal content on X, including Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM), by removing it, permanently suspending accounts, and working with local governments and law enforcement as necessary.
“Anyone using or prompting Grok to make illegal content will suffer the same consequences as if they upload illegal content.
“For more information on our policies, please refer to our help pages for our full X Rules and range of enforcement options."
This content is funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme