ABC Australia exits Elon Musk's X, cites high costs and 'toxic interactions'

ABC Australia released a statement saying that it will shut down all of its official accounts on Elon Musk's X, formerly known as Twitter, citing high costs and "toxic interactions" on the microblogging social media platform as the reasons behind the closure.

Managing Director David Anderson made an announcement saying that aside from ABC News, ABC Sport, ABC Chinese and ABC Australia, will also shut their official accounts down from Wednesday.

He further said that discontinuing the ABC accounts earlier this year had an extremely positive impact and reduced the toxic interactions that take place online.

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"There are multiple reasons for this decision," he said in a statement.

This move comes after ABC began creating content for other platforms, including TikTok and Instagram. He said that the vast majority of their digital audience was located elsewhere.

"The vast majority of the ABC’s social media audience is located on other platforms and we want to focus our effort and resources where our audiences are."

Many journalists from the media organisation had left the platform after being subjected to abuse. The high-profile names include News Breakfast host Lisa Millar and Australian Story host Leigh Sales.

"Also, we have found that closing individual program accounts helps limit the exposure of team members to the sometimes toxic interactions that unfortunately are becoming more prevalent. Concerningly, X has reduced its trust and safety teams," Anderson said.

Anderson said that the additional charges, which were introduced after Elon Musk's takeover, had made the microblogging site "increasingly costly to use".

In the month of April, NPR and PBS discontinued their presence on X. They left the microblogging site after CEO Elon Musk dubbed them as “state media”.

In the same month, ABC and SBS were also branded as “government-funded media”.

As per Guardian reports, a spokesperson had released a statement then saying that ABC will not follow in the footsteps of NPR and PBS by quitting Twitter.

“The ABC doesn’t currently have any plans to shut down all its Twitter accounts. We’re liaising with Twitter regarding changes to account verification and labels,” they said.

(With inputs from agencies)

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