Elon Musk lashes the ABC over its decision to abandon his social media platform X

Elon Musk has lashed out at the ABC over its decision to abandon his platform and accused it of favouring ‘censorship-friendly social media’.

Elon Musk has taken a swipe at the ABC over its mass retreat from his social media platform.

Billionaire businessman Elon Musk has lashed out at the ABC over its decision to abandon his platform and accused the public broadcaster of favouring “censorship-friendly social media”.

Musk purchased X (formerly Twitter) in 2022 and has made many changes to the platform, including rebranding it, sacking thousands of staff and introducing charges for verification, but its overhaul has not been welcomed by the public broadcaster.

The reasons behind the ABC’s decision to stop using the platform included blaming toxic interactions, costs and lack of trust but it was met with annoyance by Musk who took to social media to scold the taxpayer-funded organisation.

Hours after the decision was announced by the ABC, Musk responded on X to a post about the ABC’s move by writing, “Well of course they prefer censorship-friendly social media. The Australian public does not”.

Well of course they prefer censorship-friendly social media.

The Australian public does not.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 9, 2023

Mr Musk did not specifically name any social media platforms in his post.

The ABC’s managing director David Andersen announced on Wednesday in an all-staff email that the public broadcaster would stop using all accounts on X, apart from four accounts, while at the same time praising Chinese-owned platform TikTok.

“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,” he said.

“We want to focus our effort and resources on where our audiences are.”

ABC Managing Director David Andersen at Senate Estimates. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

By Thursday lunchtime Musk’s post had been viewed more than 106,000 times, had more than 470 re-posts and 3500 likes.

Mr Anderson said the ABC’s decision to stop using X was made after resounding success following a decision that was made earlier this year to stop using its Insiders program, breakfast news and politics Twitter accounts.

“In February the ABC closed three program accounts and the results from that have been positive, with negligible reduction in referral traffic from Twitter to ABC content,” he said in his all-staff email.

“The vast majority of the ABC’s social media audience is located on other platforms and we want to focus our effort and resources where our audiences are.

“X is introducing charges which are making the platform increasingly costly to use.”

The ABC will continue to post from four selected accounts including @abcnews, @abcsport, @abcchinese and @abcaustralia.

The ABC declined to comment.