THE body which represents Scotland’s librarians has stepped back from Twitter/X as a result of “misinformation” and “harmful content”.
The Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals in Scotland (CILIPS) announced its decision on the social media platform on Monday.
Twitter/X has been mired in controversy after it was taken over by billionaire Elon Musk.
The organisation said the level of “mis and dis-information” seen on the platform was one of the reasons it was quitting.
A statement said: “CILIPS has made the decision that the organisation will take a step back from X and will no longer post regularly to the platform.
“CILIPS updates will instead be posted to our website, our LinkedIn and our Instagram.
“We recognise that misinformation is not caused by one platform alone and is a far bigger societal problem, however, we believe that the level of mis and dis-information that has been seen on the Twitter/X platform and an algorithm that appears to promote hateful content are increasingly incompatible with our ethical principles.”
The organisation did confirm, however, it would continue to check for notifications and review its decision to step back in a “few months”.
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The statement added: “We will continue to work with partners and the Scottish Media and Information Literacy Community of Practice to tackle this issue and increase levels of media and information literacy via our members and the services they work for.
“We will still keep our profile active and intermittently check for notifications and messages, and will review our decision in a few months time.”
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