We have decided to leave X, formerly Twitter, on Monday, January 20, 2025. This decision is carefully considered. Twitter has long encouraged hate speech and harassment, but in recent months it has become the preferred space for the far right to express itself.
We are therefore joining thousands of people in the HelloQuitX initiative, encouraging people to leave centralized commercial social networks and move to better spaces. In particular, it makes it easier to leave Twitter by offering a migration tool.
Indeed, Donald Trump’s return to power marks a turning point in the history of X. The support of Elon Musk, boss of X, for Trump’s candidacy has led to significant changes in the moderation and algorithm of the platform. Fascist content has been heavily promoted, while content from the emancipation struggle has seen its reach reduced. We have personally noticed this, as our account has a much smaller reach than before, which has also led us to reflect on the relevance of our presence on this platform.
Since our creation, we have been fighting against the centralization of digital platforms and its consequences. In particular, we have regularly highlighted the risks of excessive concentration of power in the hands of private companies. Nevertheless, we recognized the importance of the network effect that Twitter enjoyed, and that is why we had stayed there until now. It was a question of keeping in touch with our supporters and the organizations that share our values.
However, now that a collective departure is taking shape thanks to HelloQuitX, we feel it is time to make a courageous decision and participate in setting an example, while waiting for similar initiatives to be organized soon against other centralized and toxic social networks, starting with those of Mark Zuckerberg, boss of Meta.
Alternatives do exist, and we have been running a server that is part of the Mastodon network for a long time: mamot.fr. Mastodon is a network that allows for moderation specific to each server, which reflects its community. With several million users already, we are convinced that Mastodon is the best alternative to Twitter for us.
BlueSky also exists, but we fear that this network will repeat the mistakes of Twitter. The decentralization of this platform is limited for the time being and we are concerned about the control that a single company could exercise over it.
In order to allow you to leave X quietly, we have also taken the decision to temporarily open registrations on Mamot.fr, our Mastodon instance where 43,000 people are already registered. You can create an account there now, free of charge. You can also find other servers at joinmastodon.org . And thanks to interoperability, you can follow the millions of other people registered on other Mastodon servers from Mamot.fr, as well as follow accounts on Peertube, Pixelfed and others.
Our Mastodon account is at https://mamot.fr/@LaQuadrature. We look forward to chatting with you on this federated social network!
We invite you to join the movement that is taking shape thanks to HelloQuitX. Join us on Mastodon and talk to your friends and others about it! Together, we can create a better future and free social networks.