In one of the funniest moments to come after Elon Musk helped now-President-Elect Donald Trump regain the White House, a number of woke media personalities and outlets have left Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter) in a huff over the supposed flaws with the platform and the people on it.
Amongst those who left in a huff was Don Lemon, who not that long ago had reached a deal with Elon Musk about releasing his show on X, before that blew up because of Lemon’s behavior. He announced his leaving in a lengthy statement about the supposed problems with the platform and dispute resolution.
He said, beginning his tiresome tirade about X, “I’ve loved connecting with all of you on X, but it’s time for me to leave the platform.” Continuing, he added, “I once believed it was a place for honest debate and discussion, transparency, and free speech, but I now feel it does not serve that purpose.”
Then, blaming the new terms of service, he said, “In addition, starting this Friday, November 15, X is implementing new terms of service, which among other things states that ‘All disputes … be brought exclusively in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas or state courts located in Tarrant County, Texas…’ The full terms of service can be found here: https://x.com/en/tos.”
Further clutching his pearls about the ToS, he said, “As the Washington Post recently reported on X’s decision to change the terms, this ‘ensures that such lawsuits will be heard in courthouses that are a hub for conservatives, which experts say could make it easier for X to shield itself from litigation and punish critics?’ I think that speaks for itself.”
Commenters on Lemon’s post were hilarious. One, for example, wrote, “Lemonhead, I just did some research and learned that nobody gives a shit that you are leaving X (Source: Every User of the Platform, 2024).” Another said, “This is not an airport, you don’t have to announce when you leave.”
Another who left was Joy Reid, the MSNBC personality known for her shocking rants. She apparently just deleted her account, unlike Lemon, and left without making a bit statement out of it. Insider Paper, a news account on X, posted a picture of her deleted account and wrote, “NEW: MSNBC’s Joy Reid deletes her X account after Trump win.”
Funniest amongst the leavers was The Guardian, which said it was leaving, but then also announced, “X users will still be able to share our articles, and the nature of live news reporting means we will still occasionally embed content from X within our article pages. Our reporters will also be able to carry on using the site for news-gathering purposes, just as they use other social networks in which we do not officially engage.”
So, as one commenter, Thomas Slabbers, joked, “The Guardian’s farewell to X: ‘We’re leaving but… we’ll still embed X content & reporters will keep using it. There’s no news without X.” He then added, “A better announcement for legacy news would be: from now on, our stories will be exclusively on X.”
Watch Lemon’s reaction to losing his deal with X below:
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