On the sidelines of Donald Trump’s inauguration as President of the United States, the HelloQuitteX collective is calling for a boycott of Elon Musk’s social network before January 20. Objective: leave X for other platforms while keeping your data.
On January 20, Donald Trump will officially take Joe Biden’s place as President of the United States. A date which will mark the country for the next four years but which could also be a turning point for the future of the social network X.
Indeed, during the November 2024 elections, numerous criticisms were expressed regarding the rapprochement of the boss of X, Elon Musk, with the presidential camp. He has since been appointed by Donald Trump to head a ministry of “government efficiency”. In addition to American politics, Elon Musk has chosen to remove moderation from his platform, which reinforces the spread of fake news and violent content. Thus, the date of January 20 was branded by many tweeters as “the” day of departure from the platform. Accordingly, the HelloQuitteX website emerged as one way, among others, to express one’s dissatisfaction with the new Twitter.
HelloQuitteX: an initiative to protest
Developed by CNRS researchers, HelloQuitX is actually a website. With its name as a nod to Hello Kitty, the famous little Japanese character, presents itself as a citizen initiative aimed at bringing together as many X users as possible on other platforms. The advantage of the site is that it offers tweeters instructions for leaving the social network without losing their data and contacts. Behind this French initiative, the message is clear and is displayed on the site’s home page: “January 20, Donald Trump’s inauguration day. Let’s leave X!”
For the record, HelloQuitteX takes its name from a play on words with the Japanese brand “Hello Kitty”, specifies AFP. The researchers therefore used the same codes, including a little cat and childish colors (pink and blue) in the design of the web page.
HelloQuitteX: instructions for quitting X
On its site, HelloQuitteX details the steps to follow to quit X in three steps.
- Archive a copy of your X data (messages, threads, contacts) via the social network.
- Create an account on a competing social network (Mastodon and/or Bluesky).
- Leave X as of January 20, or before.
In recent weeks, announcements of departure from Elon Musk’s social network have multiplied around the world. Public and political figures, institutions, sports clubs and even media groups have announced that they are leaving X. From now on, #HelloQuitX is used by more and more users who announce their departure from Twitter.
Between now and January 20, the HelloQuitteX movement will likely gain popularity and lead to a massive exodus of several thousand X users to migrate to Mastodon and/or Bluesky. In any case, the initiative should not stop there. One of the site’s founders recently said in the columns of West France that after X, Facebook would be the next target.