Time to get off X, prime minister. It’s repulsive

2 hours ago 1

Opinion

January 12, 2026 — 11.47am

On this one topic Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Opposition Leader Sussan Ley can agree: Elon Musk’s social media platform is abhorrent. So why do they continue to use it?

On Saturday they joined the international outcry over the repulsive chatbot Grok that Musk has just unleashed on X, which some posters have used to generate sexually explicit images of public figures, people they hate or even children.

Sure, X has now made its latest trolling toy exclusive for paid subscribers, in a token gesture of accountability, and Musk says those who upload the images will be prosecuted – I guess by government agencies that can find the posters. Musk says the tool can’t be blamed for how people use it.

But let’s face it, the space formerly known as Twitter is now a cesspit where people let loose with tribal aggression, porn slop and hate speech.

Nevertheless, the same day Albanese was telling reporters that X “once again, is an example of social media not showing social responsibility”, Australia’s Foreign Minister Penny Wong was using her account to condemn Iran’s violent crackdown on protests.

On January 4, X was the only platform Albanese’s office used to publish a statement calling for a “peaceful, democratic transition in Venezuela that reflects the will of the Venezuelan people”.

Ley was most recently on X on Thursday, attacking the PM for his drawn-out resistance to a royal commission, and she’s regularly posted there, condemning those who preach hatred.

Yes, I am still on the site and so are the mastheads I work for and many of my colleagues, dutifully posting news links that Musk’s algorithms chew up and spit out alongside deepfakes and videos you really, really wish you had not seen.

The minute the politicians we cover leave the site, I’m gone. Every week I have to wade into that bilge to fish out updates I’d rather get anywhere else: WhatsApp, Instagram, good old-fashioned emails.

Now would be a great time for the federal government and the opposition to review their use of the platform they condemn.

Posting on X is fast and simple. Governments and parties feel obliged to pump the message through as many channels as possible. But Australia just took a much bigger step, banning every child under the age of 16 from logging into any social media platform.

Julie Inman Grant, Australia’s eSafety commissioner, has been threatened with contempt of US Congress if she doesn’t testify this week before a House committee hearing designed to berate her for trying to stop X showcasing a video of a stabbing motivated by religious hatred.

The Albanese government will soon unveil legislation drafted in the wake of the Bondi killings to tackle hate speech. There is nowhere I can tap that poison faster than on X.

Maybe even last year, the benefits of posting swiftly in a space frequented at least once a month by about 6 million Australians outweighed all the ugliness.

But now that it has enabled child abuse material, X does not deserve traffic driven by government alerts or political statements. As long as it’s still the place to get ministerial updates, the rest of us are stuck with it, and Musk keeps getting away with his global enshittification project.

Time was, Twitter was the best place for important updates about bushfires, blackouts, train cancellations and rolling updates on big stories.

Six years ago it was the best source of news from Mallacoota, when the town was cut off by raging fires and people were posting images as they stood in the ocean and watched the flames advance.

Now those real-time updates are on TikTok, and disaster alerts are more reliably found on emergency service apps or through text updates or by turning on the radio.

Far more people – 50 per cent of Australians – are on Facebook, which isn’t perfect but it isn’t X. There are dozens of workarounds for getting information to people and some of them do not publish the updates surrounded by artificially enhanced misinformation.

When I first joined 17 years ago, people sneered at Twitter as a place where people posted about what they had for breakfast. That sounds impossibly wholesome these days.

Like all online forums, Twitter always had trolls. I was reporting 15 years ago on lives shattered by defamatory claims and unhinged viciousness. But it didn’t dominate the feed like it does now. In 2026 the trolls have crawled out from under the bridge and they’re running the joint, like orcs in Mordor.

If the government is serious about tackling social media’s worst abuses, it’s time to get out of X. It is no longer fit for purpose.

Michelle Griffin is federal bureau chief for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.

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