In response to growing concerns over Elon Musk’s interference in European democracies, multiple initiatives across Europe have joined forces to launch the EscapeX campaign.
The EscapeX campaign is founded by an alliance of initiatives launched in recent months. BAN X in EU joins HelloQuitX in France, ByeByeElon in Germany, Vámonos in Spain, and Hermes Center in Italy. In addition the alliance includes the campaign Leave X, an open letter for politicians to abandon X and the German NGO Campact with its petition that has obtained more than 600,000 signatures as well as the campaign SciXit that helped more than 120 German universities and research institutes to leave X. In particular, in France HelloQuitX received large media coverage and helped several organizations to leave X. Escaping from X is now simplified with the application OpenPortability, which is developed by the CNRS ISC-PIF lab and a team of volunteers, and promoted by the EscapeX campaign. OpenPortability allows users to link their identities on X, Mastodon, and Bluesky, while restoring the links between all the people who use the application. With just a few clicks, users can reconnect and reform their communities on alternative platforms, in complete transparency and without losing their previous contacts. This initiative marks a concrete step forward in data portability, a fundamental principle enshrined in the Digital Services Act at European level. BAN X in EU supports these efforts to help users leave the platform X of Elon Musk, in prospective to achieve a full ban of the platform, and so even more urgent is to leave X and to move out our data from the hands of Musk to then shut down all its platform. In fact, leaving X is not enough, it’s a large social responsibility to ban a toxic product and violent weapon for every citizen in Europe and beyond. An alternative strategy against X is provided by the Dutch organization SOMI, which organizes class actions in Europe against X and other social media networks, to compensate users for the damage they suffered from using such abusive platforms. SOMI is designated as a competent authority for bringing cross-border representative actions for consumers in the European Union. This means that SOMI can represent victims across EU member states in their collective actions. Everyone can join the class actions of SOMI by becoming a member and benefit from victories in courts against social media platforms violating the EU regulations on disinformation and privacy. Ultimately, these strategic litigation efforts help bring justice and protect democracy in Europe, which is increasingly at risk due to the misinformation spread by foreign companies and bad actors such as X and Elon Musk. If you are part of an organization advocating for digital rights, democracy in Europe, and generally human rights, please reach out to us to join the network of EscapeX campaign and by expressing support for SOMI's collective action against X for its widespread and persistent violations of European fundamental rights. Together we are stronger against X and Elon Musk’s attempt to overthrow democracy in Europe through his disinformation, misinformation, and hate speech. Sign the petition here: https://www.change.org/p/ban-x-in-europe-elon-musk-must-be-stopped-in-eu. -- # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: https://www.nettime.org # contact: [email protected]
