Paris mayor quits X, calling social media site a ‘gigantic global sewer’

3 years ago by MicroWave to c/world

Anne Hidalgo, whose opponents have used the platform to criticise her, citied disinformation and antisemitism as reasons for leaving

The mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, has announced she is quitting X, formerly Twitter, calling it a “gigantic global sewer” that is “destroying our democracies” by spreading abuse and misinformation.

After buying Twitter in 2022, the billionaire Elon Musk laid off thousands of employees, including many who moderated content on the platform. Rebranded as X, it has lost several major advertisers and has been criticised, including by the White House, for not doing enough to curtail antisemitism.

“I have made the decision to leave Twitter,” Hidalgo wrote in lengthy posts in English and French on Monday, citing manipulation, disinformation, antisemitism and attacks on scientists, climatologists, women and liberals.

zcd 78 points 3 years ago

Kind of offensive to sewers

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BedSharkPal 60 points 3 years ago

Huge fan of Hidalgo with her leadership on transforming Paris to a sustainable city. Nice to see someone taking climate change seriously.

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DeceasedPassenger 36 points 3 years ago
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KingThrillgore -7 points 3 years ago

Which one, the one under the Seine or the one above it?

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Karyoplasma 10 points 3 years ago

Seine is the river through Paris.

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FlyingSquid 1 point 3 years ago

They were calling the city itself a sewer.

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Karyoplasma 5 points 3 years ago

The comment I replied to initially said "Rhine".

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Chthonic 26 points 3 years ago

How long will we continue to get news stories whenever a minor entity leaves X (formerly Twitter)?

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Zacryon 16 points 3 years ago

As long as no minor or major public figures are remaining for leaving Twitterix.

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gatelike 3 points 3 years ago

Xitter

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ghostdoggtv 16 points 3 years ago

It's about 13 months past time

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brothershamus 23 points 3 years ago

Right? I mean, i'll take the win, absolutely, but c'mon. Anybody still on Xitter - stop. Just stop.

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NanoooK 14 points 3 years ago

It's like this for a long time

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Additional_Prune 14 points 3 years ago

"citing manipulation, disinformation, antisemitism and attacks on scientists, climatologists, women and liberals." That was my experience on Twitter before I quit it. "gigantic global sewer”--accurate

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derpgon 9 points 3 years ago

The nickname "Xitter" is much more accurate now lol.

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etuomaala 2 points 3 years ago

Pronounced as in Xí Jìnpíng?

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TimewornTraveler 13 points 3 years ago

that's the most French exit ever. I love it.

where all my Franks at? ou est tout mes francs

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Karyoplasma 10 points 3 years ago

I live like 30km from the French border and before 1957 I would have been French and then not and the French again and then not again. Does that count?

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mightyfoolish 4 points 3 years ago

We all know cultures don't follow maps. Culturally, are you essentially French?

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Karyoplasma 2 points 3 years ago

We use a lot of French loanwords in our dialect like trottoir, chaise longue, parapluie. It's generally more a connection to Alsace than to France itself. Food-wise, it's more a mix of French and German but leaning more towards German.

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Buddahriffic 1 point 3 years ago

What about efficiency of industry? Humour? Willingness to overthrow a bad government? Quality of local bread? Cheese? Sausages? Wine? Beer? Opinion of Roman culture (is it the pinnacle of greatness or were they just a bunch of losers that died in your forests that one time plus the other times?).

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AngryCommieKender 5 points 3 years ago

Je parle à peine français. Je suis désolé, je suis américain et je n'ai pas la capacité de pratiquer mon français.

Je soutiens le maire Hidalgo

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Akasazh 4 points 3 years ago

C'est pas mal ça.

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Aceticon 12 points 3 years ago

It's hugelly different.

You see, physical faeces are something people produce and have to excrete, as a side-effect of feeding not because they want to, and they have to eat to stay alive. Whilst there are some ways to reduce the amount of faeces produced, they're generally unhealthy, so people have no safe choice other than producing said physical feaces and can't really hold them in for long before there's a burst intestine, which can be deadly, hence have no choice than to excrete it.

So sewages dispose of, let's call it, unavoidable shit.

Mental faeces, on the other hand, do not at at all need to be produced, and even if produced need not be excreted. Further, unlike physical faeces, they are not produced as a side effect of feeding and rather are generally produced as a side effect of exposure to other people's excreted mental faeces.

X, unlike sewages, does not dispose of mental faeces, rather it both incentivies people to excrete their mental faeces instead of keeping them in and displays them prominetly for others to see which in turn increases the production of mental faeces in other people.

So X is almost the very opposite of sewages: the latter dispose of the kind of shit that's an unavoidable side effect of being alive whilst the former incentivises the excretion of and increases the exposure to the kind of shit that would otherwise exist only in the minds of a minority of people, plus in doing so increases the production of that kind of shit in previously unaffected humans - in other words, sewages reduce exposure to and harm from physical shit whilst X not only increases exposure to and the harm from mental shit, it even increases production of it.

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krigo666 11 points 3 years ago

Twitter+ X = Xitter.

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stifle867 21 points 3 years ago

Pronounced as "shitter"

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Sterile_Technique 13 points 3 years ago
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afraid_of_zombies 4 points 3 years ago

I will still call them twats

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Sterile_Technique 8 points 3 years ago
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Eheran 2 points 3 years ago

Ha! Thank you

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MaxPower 9 points 3 years ago

gigantic global sewer

Come to the Fediverse, it's not that gigantic lol

BUT IT'S OUR SEWER

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CluelessDude 5 points 3 years ago

Besides, we have pizza and ninja turtles

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Aurenkin 9 points 3 years ago

The global town square latrine.

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safetygunfatpopcorn 7 points 3 years ago
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rustyriffs 7 points 3 years ago

Someone should tell her about the fediverse

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lunatic 6 points 3 years ago
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Clerkle 4 points 3 years ago

That leaves Reddit as a decommissioned sewage treatment plant turned into a bum fight squat haven.

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autotldr 3 points 3 years ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:


The mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, has announced she is quitting X, formerly Twitter, calling it a “gigantic global sewer” that is “destroying our democracies” by spreading abuse and misinformation.

“I have made the decision to leave Twitter,” Hidalgo wrote in lengthy posts in English and French on Monday, citing manipulation, disinformation, antisemitism and attacks on scientists, climatologists, women and liberals.

“Twitter, far from being the groundbreaking medium that initially made information accessible to the greatest possible number of people, has in recent years become an impressive tool for destroying our democracies,” she added.

Hidalgo’s campaign to transform Paris into a cycling capital has earned her scorn and praise on social media over the years, with some users criticising the seemingly endless work and visually unappealing worksites under the #SaccageParis (WreckParis) hashtag.

“This medium has become a gigantic global sewer, and we should continue to wade into it?” said the Socialist politician, whose failed bid for the French presidency garnered 1.7% of the vote in 2022.

More recently, Hidalgo has come under fire for a trip to the French island of Tahiti, purportedly to view a 2024 Olympics surfing site, but that opponents said did not fall under her remit and during which she visited her daughter who lives there.


The original article contains 291 words, the summary contains 210 words. Saved 28%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

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furzegulo 3 points 3 years ago

truer words were never spoken

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YoBuckStopsHere 2 points 3 years ago

Twitter with Tweetdeck was a wonderful means of following the news using the List feature. It still works if you use lists but without Tweetdeck it isn't as useful.

That said, I barely even use the app anymore. I used to be able to only see what I wanted to see, now Elon is forcing right wing propaganda on everyone.

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FontMasterFlex 1 point 3 years ago

It always was. Wonder why certain people are just now seeing it? Hmm.

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afraid_of_zombies 3 points 3 years ago

Why don't you just say what you are implying?

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FontMasterFlex -1 points 3 years ago

since you seem to know what i am writing about better than I do, why don't you just enlighten us all?

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Zoldyck -12 points 3 years ago
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roguetrick 2 points 3 years ago

I'm just happy Paris elected someone from the socialist party, even if she is a secret liberal.

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Tygr -15 points 3 years ago

It was a sewer before Elon. Only when she gets called out via a hashtag, now it’s the reason to leave? Ok. Sounds legit.

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520 45 points 3 years ago

Even Stevie Wonder could see that the situation with Twitter before Musk's takeover isn't even remotely comparable to today's X.

The Twitter of yore had its problems, sure, but it acknowledged them as problems and did things to tackle it. X made those problems the whole point of the site, and threw on a shit ton more.

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DreamerofDays 2 points 3 years ago

To use the old words: “it’s not a bug, it’s a feature”

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KingThrillgore 1 point 3 years ago

Its our sewer though.

Or was our sewer, though

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Honytawk 1 point 3 years ago

If it was a sewer before Elmo, then it is an entire trash planet now.

Everything Elmo blamed Twitter for (bots, bias, censoring, ...), he copied 10 times over. There is now, more censoring, more bias and more bots than ever before.

Here are some examples: https://twitterisgoinggreat.com

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