As Musk pushes AfD, German officials consider ditching X

What do NBA star LeBron James, iconic horror writer Stephen King and left-leaning British newspaper The Guardian have in common? They have all quit X, the social network previously known as Twitter, since Donald Trump's election victory in November 2024. And they are far from the only ones. On Friday, more than 60 German-language universities announced that they would no longer be using X.

Helmed by the world's richest Trump supporter, Elon Musk, the network seems to be falling out of favor with users outside of the MAGA political camp, and — despite the billionaire's 2022 pledge to keep the platform "politically neutral" — many observers believe that he is actively working to turn X into an extremist megaphone.

Experts consulted by DW said there was no way to reliably tell if the system has been updated to boost right-wing posts since the start of the Musk era, as its algorithms are constantly being tweaked and responding to a changing user base. It is clear, however, that many banned accounts were restored under Musk despite previous violations, including hate speech, misinformation and antisemitism. Experts also point out that the overall discourse will keep shifting right as more liberal and left users leave the platform.

"The outcome for users is the same regardless of the cause: significantly more far-right content on the platform and in people’s recommended feeds," social scientist and digital media researcher Colin Henry told DW.

Musk also leveraged his status as X's most-followed account to amplify pro-Trump voices and narratives in the run-up to the US election, even referring to himself as Trump's "first buddy."

'Don't feed the troll'

Having now set his sights on politics with the European Union, Musk told his more than 211 million followers that German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is a "fool," and President Frank-Walter Steinmeier — a man whose office is mostly ceremonial — is a "tyrant." Musk also publicly endorsed the nationalist Alternative for Germany (AfD), saying it was the only party that could "save Germany." On Thursday, Musk held a live chat on X with Alice Weidel, the AfD co-leader and candidate for chancellor in Germany's upcoming elections.

Musk's support for Trump and the ongoing meddling in EU politics have prompted outrage in Germany. However, Musk's posts elicited little more than a finger wag from Scholz who said his approach was simple: "Don't feed the troll."

"It's the will of the citizens that counts in Germany, not the erratic statements of a US billionaire," Scholz told Stern magazine.

Worth the trouble?

Science fiction author and internet activist Cory Doctorow told DW that Musk already wields enough power to sway the vote in tight races. This influence is partly due to the media idolizing him as "a kind of hero" for many years, Doctorow said.

He said Musk could use X to make the case to his more than 211 million followers that "the AfD are swell fellows and their association with fascism and ethnic cleansing is overstated." 
 
"All it takes," Doctorow said, "is for a very small number of people to show up for those delicate balances that have been calculated by party consultants to be disrupted."

Doctorow said Musk's rise was a foreseeable outcome of the decadeslong effort to dismantle monopoly laws in North America and Europe, making him "so rich that he is too big to jail, too big to fail and far too big to care what anybody thinks of him."

And, though Scholz has attempted to avoid engaging with Musk, Doctorow said publicly fighting back against someone "who has a giant audience" could in fact be a great political strategy for the German chancellor.

"Musk is not very smart," Doctorow said. "He's got lots of followers. A lot of them don't really know much about him: They've just absorbed the legend — and you can debunk the legend in real time if you are good at it."

"If you suck at it, though, the last thing you want is to be humiliated in front of 200 million people. ... So I think it really depends on the politician."

A German X-odus?

On Wednesday, German Anti-Discrimination Commissioner Ferda Ataman urged the government to leave X, calling the network "an instrument of political influence by the richest man in the world."

"X is not a serious platform," Ataman said.

Several high-profile organizations and users in Germany have already quit X, including the country's highest criminal court on Thursday. Fabian Mehring, the digitalization minister of Germany's richest state, Bavaria, left X over Musk's support for the AfD.  Former Berlin state secretary Sawsan Chebli walked away from the network alongside federal lawmakers Jamila Schäfer und Misbah Khan and dozens of other prominent voices in early December, with the group saying that X has become a "place of censorship, racism, antisemitism, and rightwing agenda-setting."

A center of documentation of Nazi crimes in Munich and the city's Jewish Museum also decided to stop using the platform, along with dozens of other semiofficial and nongovernment bodies, including three Bundesliga football teams.

Government hasn't quit

Responding to this week's calls to abandon X, German officials have said the government has decided against doing so for now.

"We have to be there where people go for information," government spokesperson Steffen Hebestreit told reporters. "But, of course, you always have to ask yourself if the environment for it is still sustainable, and we are asking ourselves this question. So far, we have answered this by saying that the damage of withdrawing from this platform would be greater than the benefits."

Henry, the US social scientist, said politicians who weren't aligned with the far right were rapidly disappearing within X anyway.

"Audiences have either left, or, when officials need to communicate real-time information during, say, a natural disaster, they are drowned out by conspiracy theories or hate speech," Steffen said.

Confronted with reports that Musk is attempting to interfere in the election, Hebestreit said the fact that even multibillionaires have a right to express themselves.

"At the same time, it is also true that multibillionaires are not smarter more knowledgeable than others. They can also talk nonsense," he said. "If you look around platform X in recent days, you will find a lot of indications of it."

Edited by: Robert Mudge