Stephen King leaves X and describes the atmosphere as ‘too toxic’ | Stephen King

Stephen King has announced he is quitting X after describing the platform as “too toxic”.

In a post on X Thursday, the author of The Shining and Shawshank Redemption wrote: “I’m leaving Twitter. Tried to stay, but the atmosphere has just become too toxic.” Referring to the rival platform launched by Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, he added: “Follow me on threads if you want.”

This week, the Guardian said it would stop writing on X, citing concerns over toxic content on the platform. The German football club St. Pauli, actor Jamie Lee Curtis, American TV journalist Don Lemon and Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia have also announced they will no longer post on the page.

On Wednesday, King denied calling X’s owner, Elon Musk, “Trump’s new first lady,” or that the world’s richest person, a staunch Donald Trump supporter, had kicked him off the platform — drawing a response with, “Hey Steve! ” from Musk’s own account.

King, 77, has previously clashed with Musk over his ownership of the platform. Shortly after Musk completed the $44 billion (£35 billion) takeover of the site in 2022, when it was known as Twitter, King threatened to leave the platform after a report that it would charge users $20 to keep their blue verification check mark.

“$20 a month to keep my blue check? Fuck it, they should be paying me. If it gets enacted, I’m gone like Enron,” he wrote.

King also rebuked Musk during the presidential campaign, where Tesla’s chief executive used his account to support Trump’s candidacy. In response to a Musk claim on X that Democratic nominee Kamala Harris “wants to break the Constitution,” King wrote, “This is ridiculous. As usual.”

On Wednesday, The Guardian said it would no longer post from its official accounts because the benefits of being on the site were outweighed by the negatives, citing the “often disturbing content” found on it.

St Pauli, a team in the German Bundesliga top division, announced on Thursday that it would no longer use the site, describing the social media site as a “hate machine”. La Vanguardia, Spain’s fourth most widely read general news paper, also said it would stop writing on X because it had become an “echo chamber” for disinformation and conspiracy theories.

Announcing her departure on Instagram, Lee Curtis wrote: “God, give me the serenity to accept the things I can’t change. The courage to change the things I can. And the wisdom to know the difference.” Lemon said X was no longer a place for “honest debate and discussion, transparency and free speech”.

The Center for Countering Digital Hate also left X this week, citing changes to the site’s terms and conditions that say all legal disputes related to the platform’s new rules will be heard in the state of Texas, which the CCDH believes will benefit Musk .

X rival Bluesky has added more than 1 million new users since the US election and has nearly 15 million users worldwide, up from 9 million in September, the company said.

X has been contacted for comment.