We once opened our Twitter channel in order to have a way of reaching our audience from the worlds of research, industry, politics and anyone else interested in innovation with handy information and links to exciting content. This is no longer possible for us. We have therefore decided to leave X and put our energy into other, more rewarding platforms.
The fact that X – which many still call Twitter – no longer stands for openness to the world and democratic discourse has been becoming increasingly clear for months. Most of the concerns following the takeover by a tech billionaire have unfortunately come true. Because when you open X, the first thing that jumps out at you are posts about the American president and his best friend. All around you will find mostly comments and content that have little to do with openness and unfortunately also little to do with facts. Insults, hatred and belittling others – perhaps to make oneself feel better – now seem to be the primary motivation on the platform. X/Twitter no longer corresponds to what we stand for and what is important to us.
Inevitably, you are quickly faced with the decision: should you leave such a platform and leave it to those who forced you out? Or should you stand strong and oppose them with something that better reflects your own values? Ultimately, every organization and every individual must answer this question for themselves. There is probably no right or wrong answer here.
We once opened our Twitter channel in order to have an opportunity to reach our audience from the worlds of research, industry, politics and anyone else interested in innovation with condensed information and links to exciting content. This is no longer possible for us, because not only can we hardly find our community among the algorithm-pushed stream, it's the same the other way around – we are no longer visible to our followers either. And even if it often doesn't appear that way, running a social media channel as an organization requires a lot of effort. That's why we decided to leave X and put our energy into other, more rewarding platforms. LinkedIn in particular, as well as our brand new channel on Bluesky.
We would be happy if all those who are interested in updates from the IT Innovation Lab of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft would not only visit the website here, but also hit these channels from time to time.
Fraunhofer ICT Group