Democratic candidate for Illinois’ 9th congressional district Kat Abughazaleh announced that she would be officially dropping X, formerly known as Twitter, and called on other politicians to follow her lead.
Abughazaleh made her announcement on X, BlueSky and YouTube Monday morning. She pointed to the “algorithms that reward” right-wing extremism on the platform since billionaire Elon Musk bought the site in 2022.
“For years, many of us — governments, journalists, and the public — have considered Twitter a necessity for communication, the standard for social media. That is no longer the reality and it’s time we act like it. And to anyone running for office — especially my opponents — I encourage you to break from the site as well,” Abughazaleh wrote.
Effective immediately, I’m leaving Twitter.
And I’m calling on other candidates to stop enriching Elon Musk — directly or indirectly. He needs us. We don’t need him. pic.twitter.com/4YcXwuQNnB
— Kat Abughazaleh (@KatAbughazaleh) December 22, 2025
In a YouTube video, she elaborated.
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“Look, I used to love using Twitter. It was a big start in my career as a researcher and journalist. But the site has transformed from one of the best sources for on-the-ground news to a supercharged engine of radicalization. And like with everything the right ruins, it doesn’t suck just because of ideology. Staff from moderation to engineering has been gutted,” she said.
Abughazaleh added that while she has a checkmark on X, it was given to her “against my will,” and clarified that she does not pay for it. She also said her campaign has refused to pay for advertising on the platform, but she felt that “our presence on that site still enriches [Musk] indirectly, and it’s time to put our money where our mouth is.”
She called on her opponents and other candidates to follow her lead, saying, “Inaction is complicity and I am sick of my own.”
“If we want to set a new standard, we have to actually do it. Let’s be better and stand up for what we believe in because Elon Musk needs us. We definitely don’t need him,” Abughazaleh concluded.
Though many politicians, especially progressive ones like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) have accounts on the X rival Bluesky, both maintain a presence on X as well.
Journalists have written about the difficulty of leaving X, with Foreign Press Correspondents USA publishing a piece laying out both sides of the argument. X has a larger user base than many of its competitors; Bluesky is perhaps the most popular option, but according to Backlinko, it has 40.2 million users and 3.5 daily active users. X, comparatively, has 561 million active users with 132 million daily active users.
But while X has more users, the Foreign Press Correspondents USA points out that the platform has more harassment against journalists than other platforms. X also has changed its policies on content moderation, loosening regulations to allow misinformation and conspiracy theories to spread widely.
Abughazaleh is tied for first with Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss in the Democratic primary for the 9th district, according to recent polling. Biss has not responded to her call, and maintains an X account, but is more active on Bluesky.