Institut Pierre-Simon Laplace leaves X


The X account (formerly Twitter) of the Institut Pierre-Simon Laplace will be permanently closed before the day of Donald Trump’s inauguration at the White House.

Since Elon Musk’s purchase of the social network in 2022, the IPSL profile’s publications have been put on pause, similar to many other scientific institutes, researchers’ profiles, and media outlets specializing in ecological issues, among others.

This decision wasn’t driven by any political ideology but by the increasingly toxic environment of this social network. The content produced by the IPSL’s laboratories, the interviews with scientists, the dissemination of studies and research projects, were regularly targeted by hate messages or misinformation.

X has now become an “echo chamber” for disinformation, conspiracy theories, and racist remarks, as stated by the Spanish media La Vanguardia, while the prestigious École Polytechnique in Paris “considers that the conditions for reliable and ethical information are no longer met on the X network”.

This step is the result of the hostile atmosphere towards climate sciencse, constantly attacked by the controversial statements of its owner Elon Musk, member of Donald Trump’s presidential team, who had already withdrawn the United States from the Paris Agreement in 2017 and has since reiterated his opposition to the IPCC’s work on climate change.

The Pierre-Simon Laplace Institute is not alone in this choice, which is part of a general trend of migration to alternative social networks or redistribution to other existing platforms. The decision also responds to the call from the op-ed published on November 14, 2024, in the newspaper Libération, by David Chavalarias, a researcher at the CNRS Center for Social Mathematics Analysis and director of the Institute of Complex Systems of Paris, inviting people to leave X.

The IPSL continues to publish and engage on LinkedIn, Instagram, Bluesky, Facebook, and TikTok.

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