Fifteen years ago, on April 1, 2009, The Guardian pulled off an April Fools' prank, announcing it would cease print operations and shift entirely to Twitter (now known as X). The joke played on the social media platform's rising popularity, predicting the future of news in the age of 140-character bursts. Little did anyone know that the future was about to take an unexpected turn, and The Guardian, 15 years later, would eventually walk away from the very platform.
On November 13, 2024, The Guardian announced in an editorial its decision to "no longer post content on Elon Musk's social media platform, X, from its official accounts," citing the "often disturbing content" found on it.
The British publication house, with 27 million followers across "more than 80 accounts on X," became the first major UK media organisation to announce its departure from Elon Musk's revamped platform. The Guardian's editorial team expressed dismay at the troubling content pervasive on X, including "far-right conspiracy theories and racism," adding that the "site's coverage of the US presidential election had crystallised its decision."
"The US presidential election campaign served only to underline what we have considered for a long time: that X is a toxic media platform and that its owner, Elon Musk, has been able to use its influence to shape political discourse," wrote The Guardian in the editorial piece.
The Guardian said that posts on X will occasionally be embedded in its work as part of its live news reporting and that users of the social media platform would still be able to share its articles throughout the site. According to the Guardian, reporters will also be permitted to keep using the site to report stories.
Elon Musk's response to the Guardian's exit was swift, and in true Musk fashion, less than diplomatic. He took to X and posted that the Guardian was "irrelevant" and a "laboriously vile propaganda machine."
From prank to serious exit
Back in 2009, The Guardian famously played an April Fool's prank on its readers. The mock announcement promised to condense entire stories into 140-character bites, summarising major historical events like "JFK assassin8d @ Dallas" and "OMG Hitler invades Poland, allies declare war."
In its mock announcement, the publication even boasted of pioneering a new era of news, saying it was "consolidating its position at the cutting edge of new media technology." The Guardian then predicted that, with the rise of Twitter, journalists could condense even the most significant events into 140-character sound bites, like Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous speech shortened to "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by..."
