According to the state legislator, lawmakers will continue to operate on other platforms.
California State Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas and 57 Congressional members, all Democrats, said on March 27 that they had suspended all communications from their official state accounts on social media platform X.
Rivas’ office calls it “one of the largest and only departures of representatives selected from X.”
“There is a real risk in relying on private companies owned by Elon Musk as a communications channel,” said Rivas, a native of Salinas, California. “Democracy relies on unbiased information…I don’t think taxpayer resources should go to X.”
Cecilia Agia Curry, leader of the Winter Congressional Majority, said she had encountered misinformation about X related to the local disaster.
“The misinformation is ramping and this clearly reveals that in an emergency we will put our friends and neighbors in harm and risk,” Aguiar-Curry said in a statement. “It is irresponsible to continue to encourage our constituents to seek reliable public safety information about X.”
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The speaker’s office said he and other assembly members will continue to operate on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, Tiktok, Bluesky, YouTube, threads and other platforms.
Sen. Scott Winner, a San Francisco native, said he “shifted the focus from X” at the end of February, pointing his followers to Instagram, Thread, Tiktok and Blueski accounts.
San Diego State Sen. Akira Weber Pearson left X on Christmas Day last year.
X’s hatred conduct policy says the platform does not allow hate speech.
“We are working to fight hate, prejudice, or intolerance, and abuse motivated by abuse, particularly those who are trying to silence the voices of historically marginalized people,” the website reads. “This prohibits behaviour targeting individuals or groups who have been abused based on membership in protected categories.”
X also says it also has a policy to employ a community-driven effort called Community Notes to protect the platform from bad actors who pitch misleading information.
“Community Notes were created to provide context and information in a way that people trust and feel fair. We pursued it when we saw in our research how people respond positively from different perspectives.”
The group of assembly members leaving X also cited data indicating that X was lagging behind other major platforms in terms of usage.
Nevertheless, using X as a resource for news and information is stable.
The platform won the appeal in September 2024, partially blocking California law requiring social media platforms to publish policies to combat disinformation, harassment, hate speech and extremism. A three-judge panel on San Francisco’s 9th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a lower court judge’s decision to continue enforcement of California law, claiming X violated the initial amendment to the US Constitution.
Reuters contributed to this report.
