The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) has abandoned Elon Musk's social media, Twitter, which recently rebranded to X.
Australia's national broadcaster abandoned most of its accounts, which garnered more than 10 million followers.
ABC Australia Exits Elon Musk's X, Formerly Twitter
Tesla CEO Elon Musk speaks during the unveiling of the new Tesla Model Y in Hawthorne, California on March 14, 2019. - Tesla introduced a new electric sports utility vehicle slightly bigger and more expensive than its Model 3, pitched as an electric car for the masses. Tesla chief executive Elon Musk showed off the "Model Y" late Thursday, March 14, 2019.
According to ABC Australia, the network's managing director, David Anderson, confirmed that the public broadcaster is exiting X by abandoning most of its accounts. The news outlet is retaining at least four accounts to maintain its presence in the giant social media service. To be more precise, ABC Sports, ABC News, ABC Australia, and ABC Chinese accounts will remain available.
The public broadcaster says, "All official ABC accounts on the social media platform aside from ABC News, ABC Sports, ABC Chinese, and ABC Australia will be discontinued."
The Guardian notes that ABC Chinese, as its name gives away, specifically caters to Chinese-speaking X users.
Some of the affected accounts have already posted an update, confirming the closure of the accounts. These posts are pinned on discontinued accounts.
It is worth noting that multiple ABC journalists have already ditched their Twitter accounts. Australian Story anchor Leight Sales and News Breakfast host Lisa Millar have abandoned their accounts to restrict their exposure to toxic interactions.
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Why Australia's National Broadcaster Abandoned its Twitter Accounts
The logo for Australia's public broadcaster ABC is seen on its head office building in Sydney on September 27, 2018.
According to Sky News, Anderson declared that several reasons triggered the decision to leave Twitter.
The ABC Managing Director disclosed that the initial closure of some of ABC's accounts, including New Breakfast and Insiders, had a "positive" effect. He says that the move limited that toxic interaction online.
The recent shift comes as ABC started embracing other social media services, shifting their focus on providing content to TikTok and Instagram users. Anderson stresses that most of its social media audience is apparently flooding TikTok and YouTube, as well as Mark Zuckerberg's Instagram and Facebook. And as such, he says, "We want to focus our effort and resources on where our audiences are."
The Guardian notes that two other public service broadcasters, including NPR and PBS, have stopped using Twitter. The two outlets quit the social media service after billionaire Musk tagged them as "state media." Besides them, Twitter also dubbed ABC and SBS as "government-funded media."
During that time, an ABC spokesperson says they do not have plans to abandon their Twitter account. But this time, the public broadcaster discontinued almost all of its accounts on the Musk-led social media service, citing various reasons.
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