Halifax to phase out use of X as official social media platform

Halifax Council has voted to remove its presence from the X social media platform.

Halifax council has voted to phase out X (formerly known as Twitter) accounts officially used by the municipality, citing concerns over perceived toxicity on the site and the owner’s close relationship with the United States president.

In February, Councillor Laura White brought forward a motion asking for a staff report looking into the feasibility of discontinuing official municipality X accounts. That motion passed 13-to-three.

“It’s less informative, less useful,” White said in February. “You can no longer look at the posts on this site without logging in. It’s less accessible.”

Council recently received the completed report, which recommended discontinuing all eight active X accounts by July 15 and transitioning to Bluesky, a social media platform that started as a research project at Twitter in 2019, but became independent in 2021.

Halifax’s corporate communications accounts have a total of 243,545 followers.

Council voted 16-1 in favour of the motion on Tuesday, with Councillor David Hendsbee being the sole dissenting vote.

“I don’t like censorship of any sort,” he said. “Even though X might have some revolting opinions from time to time, I’d like to maintain use of it because it has a broader penetration with the marketplace.”

The report notes staff has been reevaluating its social media platform use in recent years amid “significant volatility” on the apps.

“Staff placed particular focus on the status of X, due to concerns with policy and operational changes undertaken by this platform and began to investigate alternative options among emerging platforms,” the report reads.

“As part of the assessment process, concerns regarding X’s governance, operational stability, declining user engagement, misinformation, disinformation and the introduction of paid features limiting access to analytics were identified. Also, X’s evolving policies and content moderation practices were deemed to be increasingly inconsistent with our organizational values, most notably diversity and inclusion, respect, integrity, accountability and evidence-based decision making.”

Elon Musk purchased Twitter in 2022 and rebranded it as X in 2023. Musk has also become a close advisor for U.S. President Donald Trump, who has discussed the possibility of Canada joining his country as the 51st state.

“I closed my X account and I haven’t missed it,” said Councillor Sam Austin. “X has become very politicized. The owner of X is part of a government that means us harm. This is not our only information source and it shouldn’t be.”

The report highlighted Bluesky as an alternative to X, noting its similar interface to the older platform, the ability for people to see posts without signing in, transparent content moderation and select built-in analytics available at no cost.

The report also conducted two surveys – one led by Narrative Research – that found 10 per cent of social media users in the region have started using Bluesky in the last year, making it the most common emerging platform.

A survey on the municipality’s website received more than 4,200 responses. Fifty-seven per cent of respondents said they were using X less or not at all, citing problems with misinformation/disinformation and negative content.

“Residents are very supportive of moving away from X and supportive of adapting Bluesky,” said Breton Murphy, corporate communications with the municipality.”

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