Twitter price hike forces ABC to slash its number of active accounts

The national broadcaster is blaming charges, as well as security concerns, as to why it’s ditching most of its Twitter presence.

The ABC is blaming Twitter’s decision to introduce charges, as well as cuts to the social media platform’s content control team, for a cull of ABC-controlled accounts.

From Wednesday, the national broadcaster will scrap all but four of its accounts on the Elon Musk-owned social media platform, which he recently rebranded to “X”.

The only ABC accounts to remain active will be ABC News (@abcnews), ABC Sport (@abcsport), ABC Chinese (@abcchinese), and ABC Australia (@abcaustralia).

ABC's ABC News Twitter profile, one of only four ABC-run accounts that will remain after the national broadcaster's social media cull.

A statement from Aunty says these accounts “overwhelmingly provide the most value.”

“The vast majority of the ABC’s social media audience is located on official sites on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, with TikTok forecast to have the strongest growth over the next four years,” it reads.

“We also found that closing individual program accounts helps limit the exposure of team members to the toxic interactions that unfortunately are becoming more prevalent on X.

“Concerningly, X has reduced its trust and safety teams. Additionally, it is introducing charges which make the platform increasingly costly to use.”

Four Corners tweet announcing its X account has been archived. Supplied / Twitter/X

All other accounts will be discontinued, with pinned messages informing users where they can access content.

Affected accounts, such as ABC Science and abc730, now have their bios changed to read “This account has been archived as of August 2023,” with directions to the ABC News and ABC Australia accounts.

It’s believed more than a dozen ABC accounts will be affected.

The move follows similar action in February, when three major ABC-run Twitter accounts were discontinued. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Jeremy Piper

It follows action in February to discontinue the accounts for Sunday political chat show Insiders, ABC Politics and News Breakfast.

“This is a better use of resources while still serving audiences on this platform,” an ABC statement at the time said.

Tech billionaire Musk purchased Twitter for $US44bn ($66.9bn) in October last year, immediately firing the company’s top three executives and laying off about 50 per cent of the company’s workforce.

Twitter’s head of trust and safety, Ella Irwin, resigned in early June.

Since July 23, the company has been undergoing a rebrand, to be called “X”.