St. Pauli has become first major football club to quit X, followed by a second Bundesliga club this week. Elon Musk’s platform has been labelled « a hate machine » – and now, even NBA superstar LeBron James has left X. How long will other major European sports clubs take to follow suit?
ADVERTISEMENTHundreds of thousands of users are fleeing Elon Musk’s X, following Donald Trump’s re-election, with an estimated 115,000 accounts deactivated in the US alone on the day after the ballot.
Celebrities and prominent brands ditching the platform cite mounting concerns over the unchecked spread of misinformation and hate speech, as well as what they consider to be Musk’s role in facilitating Trump’s return to power.
Last week, Spain’s La Vanguardia and the UK’s Guardian announced that it would no longer post from the X platform using official accounts, with the latter citing the “often disturbing content” found there.
“X is a toxic media platform and its owner, Elon Musk, has been able to use its influence to shape political discourse,” the Guardian said in a statement.
Celebrities have also begun the X-odus, with the likes of Mark Hamill, Alyssa Milano, Jamie Lee Curtis, Stephen King and Guillermo del Toro decamping from X to Bluesky – the decentralised social media platform which has seen a major uptick in users since the results of the US election.
And now, the sports world is following, with Bundesliga club St Pauli recently announcing that it was leaving the “hate machine” that is X, becoming the first major football club to leave Musk’s platform.
“Following his election victory Donald Trump has picked Musk to head up a new government department,” St Pauli’s statement continued. “Musk was a major backer of the Trump campaign and also used X for this purpose.”
The traditionally leftwing Hamburg-based Bundesliga club also said they feared the site could end up “manipulating the public discourse” during the German election campaign, and urged fans to switch to Bluesky.
St. Pauli’s statement was illustrated by a photo of a sticker showing a fist smashing a swastika, beside the club’s emblem and a slogan saying its fans are against right-wing politics. The club said it would leave its content from the past 11 years on X “as it has historical value” but won’t make any new posts.
Another German club, Werder Bremen, has become the second Bundesliga club to leave X. They slammed Musk for allowing hate speech and other negative behaviour to spread.
“The radicalisation of the platform is being actively driven by Elon Musk and his personal posts, which include transphobic and antisemitic comments, as well as the spreading of conspiracy narratives. Next to nothing is currently being monitored on the platform. The algorithms and decision-making at X are entirely non-transparent processes,” read the statement.
“Additionally, Elon Musk is utilising the social network as a political weapon, as seen recently during the course of the US election. SV Werder Bremen are taking a clear stance against hatred, hate speech, discrimination and exclusion. The Green-Whites are proud to stand for diversity, freedom and democracy, as well as for cohesion and solidarity in society.”
According to a report by German outlet BILD, a number of other Bundesliga clubs, including Bayer Leverkusen and Hannover 96 have confirmed they’re monitoring the situation carefully, stopping short of announcing their own departures but, critically, also not ruling it out.
In the US, one massive sports star has also quit X: none other than NBA legend LeBron James, who announced an indefinite hiatus from social media.
The Los Angeles Lakers player, who boasts more than 212 million followers across his X and Instagram accounts, cited negative reporting in the US media as the reason for his decision.
ADVERTISEMENT« Getting off social media for the time being. Y’all take care, » James wrote on X.
The 39-year-old also shared a post from Rich Kleiman, the long-time agent of NBA star Kevin Durant: « With so much hate and negativity in the world today, it confuses me why some of the National sports media still think that the best way to cover sports is through negative takes.”
It remains to be seen whether other European sports clubs will follow the lead of the two German clubs and one of the NBA’s most celebrated players. Even if the limited data on global X user numbers makes measuring the full extent of the exodus from the platform almost impossible, it’s plain to see that the trend of declining user numbers on the platform since the 2022 Musk takeover is far from over.
All good news for Bluesky and its blocking features designed to stamp out harassment and abuse. However, with politics being one of the major motives for leaving X, there is the risk the platforms could splinter into two echo chambers.
ADVERTISEMENTStill, American writer and media critic Parer Molloy, disagrees: « It’s not about avoiding disagreement – it’s about fostering an environment where disagreements can actually happen productively, » she wrote. « On platforms like X, the problem isn’t just opposing views – it’s the sheer volume of hate, harassment, and dehumanising rhetoric that gets amplified by algorithms. »
