Sir Elton John said he will not use Twitter after a change in its policy that he believes will allow misinformation to flourish unchecked. 75 year-old musician Elon Musk, who bought the social media outlet for $44 billionn 35.9 bn, said he was granting general amnesty for suspended accounts, which experts said would lead to superspreaders of hate returning to the platform.
John tweeted on Friday: "Throughout my life I have tried to bring people together. It saddens me to see how misinformation is being used to divide our world.
I have decided to no longer use Twitter because of the recent change in policy that will allow misinformation to flourish unchecked. After Musk resigned earlier this month, accounts suspended on Twitter that would be able to return to the platform include Steve Bannon, Donald Trump's former adviser, far-right UK commentator Katie Hopkins, and David Duke, the former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard Earlier this month, the rapper Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, was suspended from Twitter after he posted an image of a swastika blended with the Jewish symbol of a Star of David.
Musk was recently told by the EU's commissioner for digital policy, Thierry Breton, that he needed to protect users to ensure that Twitter didn't violate rules that threatened tech giants with big fines or even a ban in the European Union.
He was told that he had to increase his efforts to comply with the new rules, known as the Digital Services Act, which is set to take effect next year.
The Centre for Countering Digital Hate CCDH said that Musk's recent tweet, which suggested that hate speech impressions were down by a third, was misleading because it focused on how many containing hate speech were actually posted to the social media network instead of how many were seen.
Since Musk took over, a number of celebrities, including Whoopi Goldberg, Gigi Hadid and Jim Carrey, have left Twitter.