Bundesliga club call out Elon Musk for ‘hate speech’ as they make moral stand and leave X | OneFootball

Bundesliga outfit, Werder Bremen, have made a moral stand by leaving social media platform X with immediate effect, calling out the site’s owner, Elon Musk.

Their German account has almost 540,000 followers, with their English account amassing just over 37,000 followers.

Werder call out Elon Musk for ‘hate speech’

Calling out Musk for ‘hate speech’ and ‘hatred towards minorities,’ it’s an incredibly brave move by the club.

The club’s full statement, released on the official club website read as follows:

SV Werder Bremen’s executive board have decided that the club will leave the social media platform ‘X’ (formerly Twitter). The announcement was made by Klaus Filbry, CEO of SV Werder, during the club’s annual general meeting on Monday.

Since Elon Musk took over the platform, hate speech, hatred towards minorities, right-wing extremist posts and conspiracy theories have been allowed to spread at an incredible pace, all under the guise of freedom of speech. The radicalisation of the platform is being actively driven by Elon Musk and his personal posts, which include transphobic and antisemitic comments, as well as the spreading of conspiracy narratives.

Next to nothing is currently being monitored on the platform. The algorithms and decision making at X are entirely non-transparent processes. Additionally, Elon Musk is utilising the social network as a political weapon, as seen recently during the course of the US election.

SV Werder Bremen are taking a clear stance against hatred, hate speech, discrimination and exclusion. The Green-Whites are proud to stand for diversity, freedom and democracy, as well as for cohesion and solidarity in society.

With the recent radicalisation of the platform, a line has been crossed for the club. The Green-Whites are therefore leaving X effective immediately and hope that our more than 600,000 followers will follow the club on Bluesky in the future.

Though the X platform has changed to a vast degree since its days as Twitter, it still remains one of the go-to social media sites, so Werder’s move to the much newer and seemingly less controversial – but also less popular – Bluesky is quite the risk.

That said, one has to take their hat off to whomever has made the decision.

Sometimes it needs one person, or in this case organisation, to raise their heads above the pulpit and make their point with no fuss and no drama.

It would certainly be an interesting exercise to now see how many other sports organisations – football or otherwise – follow suit.

If there’s a mass movement away from X, it could result in the ultimate collapse of the platform, which Musk surely wouldn’t have countenanced when becoming the new owner.