Stephen King and the Guardian leave X

On Wednesday of this week, writer Stephen King was still full of belligerence. Then he wrote on “Muskie” kicked him out of X: “And yet here I am.”

The question of how long the bitter Trump opponent Stephen King, who has over seven million followers on made. But at the latest on the day that Donald Trump was elected US President again: On

King is now on Threads

On Thursday evening the time had come. King tweeted, “I’m leaving Twitter,” ignoring one last time that Twitter is now called X. He tried to stay, King continued, but the atmosphere had just become too toxic. If you want, you should follow him on threads in the future. This is an Instagram offshoot where you can exchange text messages. Instagram and Threads are part of Mark Zuckerberg’s empire.

King is another extremely prominent X-user from the cultural world who is leaving Musk’s now ultra-right communication medium, after Whoopi Goldberg, who was one of the first, actresses like Jamie Lee Curtis, Jenna Ortega and Jenny Slate or rock and pop stars like Taylor Swift , Elton John or Jack White.

migration movement

Above all, King announced his departure in a week in which the Guardian also became the first major media company to say goodbye to X. On the Wednesday that King wrote that he wanted to stay on, the British newspaper explained why it was no longer posting on X: “We believe that the disadvantages of being on X now outweigh the advantages and that the Resources could be better used to promote our journalism elsewhere.”

And the “Guardian” statement continues: “The US presidential election campaign has only further underlined what we have long suspected: X is a toxic media platform and its owner, Elon Musk, has used its influence to promote political “Nevertheless, you can still post links to the Guardian’s articles, and its reporters can also continue to broadcast on the platform.

Since Elon Musk has owned Twitter, he has restructured the news service to his sole control. Donald Trump, whose account had been blocked by Twitter, was allowed to return, along with a lot of right-wing and right-wing extremist speakers. X has become an aggressive Republican campaign vehicle this year, and Musk has the widest reach, with over 200 million followers, however many of them are real.

As Musk wrote after Trump’s victory over Harris and his appointment as head of a so-called efficiency commission in the future Trump administration: “I believe this will be the most transformative presidency since the founding of the country. It will be a revolution.” And yesterday on the appointment of John F. Kennedy’s nephew, conspiracy theorist and anti-vaccination activist Robert F. Kennedy as the future US Secretary of Health: “Congratulations”.

Basically, X is unbearable unless you’re a supporter of Donald Trump and the “Musk-Man,” as King calls him. Hate and disinformation are the order of the day. And yet, despite many resignations in the last two years, numbering in the hundreds of thousands, the service still seems to be a medium of some importance with its 600 million users worldwide, far from all of whom are right-wing users. And not just to find out about the moods and plans of the Trump administration and its right-wing and ultra-right loyalists.

As is well known, Germany’s Green Economics Minister Robert Habeck had only recently decided to reapply to X after five years of abstinence with his failed application for chancellor, humming Grönemeyer’s song “Time for something to turn.” He heralded the return with “back for good” and justified it as follows: “Leaving places like this to the loudmouths and populists is not easy,” said Habeck on November 7th. “But making it easy for yourself cannot be the solution. Not today. Not this week. Not at this time. That’s why I’m back on X.”

The SPD has returned to X

The federal executive committee of the SPD, which actually closed its account in February, has also been posting on X again since the traffic light coalition broke up: “Challenging times call for prudent answers. That’s why we decided to return to X. Because only those who contribute their voice can make their voices heard – we are looking forward to an exciting time.”

The trend regarding X in this country is the opposite of that in the Anglo-American region. This is surprising given that X is one of the smallest platforms in Germany. According to a current media study by ARD and ZDF, only a fraction of the German population uses the service: three percent use it every day and seven percent weekly. Compared to other social media, X’s reach is low: 37 percent of Germans use Instagram at least once a week and 26 percent use Instagram daily, followed by Facebook (33 percent) and TikTok (18 percent). Even Snapchat and Pinterest rank ahead of X.

But almost all German politics and media operations can still be found at X. And they often still shy away from using similar text services such as Bluesky, Mastodon or Threads, not least because it is sometimes tedious to generate the previous high reach and number of followers on an ad hoc basis. Especially if you’re not Stephen King: The writer has barely been on threads for 24 hours and he already has 250,000 followers. “Being here on Threads feels freeing” is what he wrote last.

Will the SPD and Habeck think about this again, for the sake of freedom?