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Lisa Nandy, the U.K.’s Culture Secretary, said Thursday that she is leaving X, and that the Department for Culture, Media and Sport will follow suit.
In what could be her final poston the platform, Nandy wrote: “I’ve
decided to leave this platform and my department will too. A platform originally designed for free speech and expression now favors abuse and misinformation over meaningful debate. It isn’t healthy for our democracy or our communities and I don’t want to support it.”
Nandy said she will remain active on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.
Variety has reached out to X for comment.
The move makes Nandy one of the most senior members of Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government to depart the platform. She joins the Attorney General’s Office, which pulled out of X last month, becoming the first U.K. government department to do so; the DCMS is now the second. The attorney general told MPs the platform “constantly descends to racism and misogyny.”
Nandy’s own scrutiny of the platform is not new; she has spoken out before about its handling of user safety and false content. That scrutiny comes as X faces mounting regulatory pressure in Britain. Media regulator Ofcom opened a formal investigation into X on Jan. 12, after reports that the Grok chatbot had been used to generate and circulate illegal, nonconsensual intimate images. The regulator has since sent X legally binding requests for information; as of Ofcom’s most recent update, the case remains open and X has told Ofcom it introduced new safeguards, though no findings have been issued.
The U.K.’s Information Commissioner’s Office and the European Commission are running parallel probes, and Ofcom has the power to fine X up to £18 million ($24 million) or 10% of its worldwide revenue, whichever is greater.
Nandy’s departure adds to a string of institutional exits from X since Elon Musk’s 2022 takeover and rebrand from Twitter, including The Guardian, NPR and the European Federation of Journalists, which represents more than 320,000 journalists worldwide.
