A Vancouver councillor wants the city to find an alternative to Elon Musk’s X.com for providing live meeting updates, citing numerous issues with the platform. Green Coun. Pete’ Fry’s motion titled “Breaking up with the X: Equitable Access for Real-time Council Agenda and Speaker Updates” will be tabled at next Wednesday’s meeting. Currently, the city clerk’s X account is the only way people can track meeting developments, such as which agenda item is being discussed or how the speakers list is progressing, the motion notes. But for those without an X account, those real-time updates are unavailable. “Sole reliance on X.com for real-time online updates poses accessibility challenges for residents who do not use or cannot access the platform,” Fry’s motion says. Signing up requires sharing personal information and granting the platform “world-wide licence” to use one’s content, the motion says, which is one of the reasons Fry says there’s a need for a different method of sharing and accessing meeting updates. Fry cited multi-day meetings on the 2026 budget, which saw more than 600 people sign up to speak, as one instance where constituents told him they were frustrated with their inability to keep up with proceedings because of the exclusive use of X. But the councillor also cited broader issues with the platform and its content. “Research indicates X.com promotes disinformation and misinformation, fosters political polarization, may be involved in election interference, and amplifies divisive narratives, undermining the neutrality expected of official government communication,” the motion reads. “Recent controversies involving Grok, X.com’s AI chatbot, producing antisemitic and extremist outputs, misidentifying public figures and misrepresenting factual information raises reputational and ethical concerns for public institutions using the platform.” Fry is asking staff to find a way to use the city’s official website and meeting portal as the primary source for live updates, which can be embedded using existing tools. He is also asking for a public education campaign to inform people about the change and the underlying reason.
