Swiss public broadcasters RTS and SRF are drastically reducing their communications via the social network X (formerly Twitter).
French-language RTS said that since X was taken over by billionaire Elon Musk in 2022 it no longer corresponded to the company’s journalistic values.
“Dialogue with our followers is no longer possible [on X], because they are being held hostage by trolls and bots and subjected to hate campaigns and defamation,” RTS spokesman Marco Ferrara told the Swiss News Agency Keystone-ATS on Friday.
The withdrawal is scheduled to take place over the next few months. RTS currently manages around 15 accounts on the platform. “We will maintain a presence with the @RadioTeleSuisse corporate account to keep an eye on things and be able to intervene, for example in the event of our identity being stolen,” he added.
The picture of Elbow Mush in the thumbnail looks like he’s going for the “Justin Timberlake if he aged badly after a diet of whiskey, hamburgers and pocket-fulls of drugs” look.