German football club FC St Pauli became one of the first sports franchises to withdraw from social media platform X (formerly known as Twitter). The club announced that it was withdrawing from the social media platform because its owner Elon Musk had “turned a space for debate into an amplifier of hate that was capable of influencing the German parliamentary election campaign.”

The Hamburg-based Bundesliga club has never made any bones about its left-leaning ideological influences. The club statement was accompanied by a photo of a sticker showing a fist smashing a swastika, beside the club’s emblem and a slogan saying its fans are against right-wing politics.

St Pauli joined the platform in 2013, and currently has 2,50,000 followers. The club also called on its followers on Musk’s X to switch to BlueSky while stating that St Pauli’s English account will also move to BlueSky.

Bluesky is a rival social networking platform that has being launched by former Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey.

St Pauli said that it had already “curbed its use of X”. It said that the account will no longer be used, but the posts from the last 11 years will remain online in “view of its contemporary historical value”.

Explaining its decision on the club website, St Pauli said: “Since taking over Twitter, Musk has converted X into a hate machine. Racism and conspiracy theories are allowed to spread unchecked and even curated. Insults and threats are seldom sanctioned and are sold as freedom of speech.

“In addition, following his election victory, Donald Trump has picked Musk to head up a new government department. Musk was a major backer of the Trump campaign and also used X for this purpose. It is to be assumed that X will also promote authoritarian, misanthropic and far-right content during the forthcoming German election campaign, this manipulating the public discourse.”