Why are you putting ads on your website for Musk for free?
Don't Trust Musk? Takedown the X/Twitter links and Add a Bluesky Link
Right under the ACLU’s online-action “Call Congress: Keep DOGE Out of Your Data,” there is the familiar blue bird linking to the ACLU X account. On the top of the Moveon.org website, one of the largest Democratic Party affiliated grassroots mobilization nonprofits in the country, perches the same small aviary advertisement. On the bottom of the website of almost every single state affiliate of Common Cause, which has launched a national “Fire Elon Campaign,” there is a link to their X account.
Each of these links serves as an advertisement, a small yet not insignificant reminder that Elon Musk’s social media platform exists and is a place to go for updates. While the ACLU and Planned Parenthood have taken the courageous step to stop posting on X—in the case of the ACLU leaving behind 1.6 million followers—these organizations still haven’t stopped donating ad space to Elon. They are not alone.
In our review of 32 national US-based nonprofits dedicated to environmental, humanitarian, and civil rights causes, 25 included an X or Twitter link on their homepage. In contrast, only eight had a link to their Bluesky account. Almost all of the state affiliates of Planned Parenthood, Common Cause, and ACLU follow the same pattern (with a few notable exceptions like ACLU Kentucky and Planned Parenthood Michigan! Nice job!). Surprisingly, even groups like Public Citizen, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Demand Progress, and the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (organizations dedicated to internet freedom, free speech, and transparency) had X links but not Bluesky links [Update: After several weeks of effort, EFF, Demand Progress and FIRE have all added Bluesky links to their websites].
At TwitterTakedown, we are working towards the day when Bluesky is bigger than X. It is already a better platform and a superior product, and the only reason so many people are still on X is due to collective inertia. But we understand that for many, leaving X right now is not practical—after building up so many followers for so many years, they cannot afford to fully abandon them. And we also understand that important conversations still happen on X and many people, even those that dislike Musk, want to be part of that larger conversation. In the long run, we hope that everyone has the foresight to walk away like the ACLU, Planned Parenthood, and 350.org. In the meantime, taking down the Twitter/X link off your website is the easiest, most cost-free act one can take. Even if you are not ready to leave X yet, there is no need to promote X.
Supporting TwitterTakedown costs nothing, but supporting Twitter costs everything. For example, Americare, one of the largest organizations supporting international aid in America, is looking for donations to help respond to the devastating earthquake in Myanmar and Thailand. Any donations will be making up for Musk cutting millions in international humanitarian aid. As reported widely, his slashing of the USAID budget specifically resulted in the firing of USAID contractors that would normally have been leading the rescue efforts after the earthquake. Yet on the same page that Americares is asking for these donations, there is an ad for a Musk product, a product he has used to disseminate misinformation about USAID.
These organizations are simply acting against their own self interest by promoting Musk’s platform in their communications. Many of these links are years old, so old that many organizations never even updated the old Twitter link to an X link. It is time for them to realize that this company isn’t the old Twitter. It is now a largely dysfunctional propaganda machine used by an oligarch looking to maximize his power wherever he can. It is an AI training tool fully owned by the company X-AI whose primary goal is to steal our ideas and words and use them against us.
One reason many sites don’t have links to Bluesky is no fault of their own. Squarespace, the platform used by the vast majority of these organizations, amazingly still does not support a bluesky link icon (Here is a guide for an easy work around for adding a Bluesky link on Squarespace). Despite many people’s efforts, they are still refusing to add this very simple feature. Similarly Sprout, which is the most popular cross-posting and social media analytics platform, are the gatekeepers to a lot of online engagement. Like so much of the infrastructure that the internet relies on, they are still forcing us to engage with X even though we don’t want to. Luckily, Fedica is a cross-posting platform that supports Bluesky, and Wix is a website building platform that does too, so we all have better options.
So please sign this Squarespace petition promising to stop using Squarespace until they add a Bluesky feature and another targeting Sprout. Take down the link on your website to Twitter/X or at least add a Bluesky link. There are a hundred small things we can all do to support the exodus from X to Bluesky and the TwitterTakedown campaign. No one is going to stop Elon for us.