Editor’s Note | Why the Mississippi Free Press is Leaving X

From the time we launched the Mississippi Free Press at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic nearly five years ago in March 2020, Twitter served as a vital tool for us to share our stories, build an audience and grow as a publication.

It made it easy to get potentially life-saving information to people—not only in Mississippi, but around the country and the world—in mere minutes. And Twitter allowed us to connect with everyday Mississippians as well as experts from here and all around who helped us tell better stories with deeper context. There are so many stories we never could have told if not for the connections we made on Twitter. 

But that bird has flown the coop.

Twitter’s time as a useful tool for sharing journalism has passed. Now known as X and run by the richest man in the world, a platform that was once invaluable for journalists in a fast-moving news landscape has become a toxic wasteland. It is a platform where information that offends the powerful is suppressed, while a diverse cross-section of bigots and disinformation peddlers with blue checks rules the roost.

Deep Concerns About World’s Richest Man

Now, X’s owner, Elon Musk, is using his money and power to influence our government drastically as an unelected official in a role Congress hasn’t created. He is using this power to slash through our government, cutting vital services that protect Americans’ health and finances. 

As he seeks to turn X into an “everything app” that includes money transfers, he has also sought to dismantle the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Congress created the CFPB in 2010 to protect consumers against predatory practices in the financial sector in response to the 2008 financial crisis. 

Elon Musk, who Trump picked to lead DOGE’s slashing of the federal government, would like to dismantle the Consumer Financial Protect Bureau—which NPR calls a conflict of interest. Brandon Bell/Pool via AP

“The fact that Musk is now engaged in payment businesses that would be regulated by the CFPB at the same time he’s trying to tear down the CFPB puts in sharp relief the conflicts of interests here and how much this disserves the general public,” said Richard Cordray, who led the agency under President Barack Obama, NPR reported.

As a news organization, we have deep concerns about Earth’s richest man—a man who is eyeing the status of becoming the first trillionaire—controlling a social-media platform while also presiding over the dismemberment of core parts of the government in ways that often appear to benefit him.

X Just Ain’t Doing It For Us Anymore

Aside from moral concerns about the proliferation of white supremacists and ethical concerns about Musk, there’s a practical reason to leave: X just ain’t doing it for us anymore. Our reporters work hard on their stories. Twitter’s (very much imperfect) algorithm used to ensure that work was seen—often by tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of people.

That hasn’t been the case in a while. X now accounts for less than half of a percent of our monthly traffic, down from about 12% in late 2022—when Musk became Twitter’s new owner. Let’s just say, his algorithm isn’t friendly to our kind of facts-to-power journalism.

Elon Musk holds a chainsaw as he arrives to speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference, CPAC, at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center, Thursday, Feb. 20, 2025, in Oxon Hill, Md. AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana

Pageviews aren’t everything, and we are not going to fork over the money our donors give us to Elon Musk’s app to artificially boost us so we can compete for engagement with crypto bots and Nazis. Besides, Bluesky for months now has sent far more readers to our site than X has. It has proven to connect us to readers, sources, supporters and communities in the way old Twitter once did (and perhaps even better). Our Bluesky followers skyrocketed to over 60,000 as of this week since the fall—far more than many local media outlets, even with far deeper pockets.

We began shifting our focus to Bluesky in October—a move that was absolutely the right decision—and have been eyeing an exit from X for both ethical and practical reasons. We understand that some believe we should stay on X as a beacon of honest reporting, but it’s a light few people see now anyway thanks to algorithmic suppression. We do not want our continued presence on X to legitimize the smorgasbord of unabashed bigotry, misinformation and outright grifting that X serves up.

We’ve Gone to a Better Place

Still, we know that many of our readers remained on X and did not immediately decide to migrate over to other platforms at the same time we did, so we continued posting a few more months as people made their way over. Thankfully, many of you who made Twitter a worthy place to be have since joined us on Bluesky and other platforms where we have a presence and don’t have to continually tolerate ugly trolls abusing our team members and even threatening us. Now, it’s time to say goodbye to the former bird app for good.

X users can still share our stories—just don’t expect them to get much traction there. Our reporters may at times use X for newsgathering purposes when relevant, though its usefulness even for that purpose is much diminished from what it was. We are not requiring our staff to leave X or to make Bluesky accounts; it’s up to them to decide because we do not own or control their personal social-media accounts. But much of our team is already on Bluesky, and we have a starter pack where you can follow them here. 

Our account likely will remain active for posterity and to prevent imposters from taking it over, but we have tweeted our last tweet (or whatever they’re called now).

The Mississippi Free Press’ move to Bluesky has been fruitful in followers, new readers and donations. 

You can continue keeping up with the Mississippi Free Press by following us and our reporters on Bluesky, Threads, Instagram, LinkedIn, Mastodon and Facebook.

And while you’re here: The Mississippi Free Press does not rely on subscription fees to fund us. Our reporting is always free for anyone to read with no paywalls. Instead, we rely on donations from our readers and supporters to fund us. So if you would like to support and help grow our nonprofit, women-founded newsroom, please consider giving a recurring or one-time donation to us at mfp.ms/donate. Right now, a Tennessee couple is doubling your donations.

We thank you all for your support and encouragement. Now, onward.

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