BERLIN (AP) — The German football club St. Pauli will abandon the social network X, stating that the platform has become a “hate machine” that could influence the upcoming German elections.
Based in Hamburg and left-leaning, the Bundesliga team announced on Thursday that it was ending its activity on the platform formerly known as Twitter. It encouraged its 250,000 followers there to switch to Bluesky, a rival social network promoted by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.
"The reason for the withdrawal: owner Elon Musk has turned a space for debate into a hate amplifier that can also influence the German federal election campaign," St. Pauli said in a statement on its website. "Since Musk took control of Twitter... he has turned X into a hate machine. Racism and conspiracy theories are spread without restrictions or even curated. Insults and threats are barely sanctioned and sold as supposed freedom of speech."
The St. Pauli statement was illustrated with a photo of a sticker showing a fist crushing a swastika, next to the club emblem and a slogan stating that their fans are against right-wing politics.
St. Pauli pointed out that Musk supported Donald Trump during the U.S. presidential election "with the help of X," and that "it can be assumed that X will also promote authoritarian, misanthropic, and far-right content in the (German) federal election campaign and thus manipulate public discourse."
Germany would have early parliamentary elections on February 23 after Chancellor Olaf Scholz dismissed Finance Minister Christian Lindner last week, ending a contentious alliance between three political parties.
St. Pauli is the first top-level German club to announce its departure from X following the results of the elections in the United States. The British newspaper The Guardian said on Wednesday that it will no longer publish content on the network, describing it as a "toxic media platform."
Bluesky said on Wednesday that its total users had increased to 15 million, up from approximately 13 million at the end of October.
St. Pauli said he would leave their content from the last 11 years on X "since it has historical value", but they will not make new posts.