Deutsche Welle (DW), Germany's public international broadcaster, has announced a decision to close roughly half of its accounts on the X platform (formerly Twitter) by the end of the year. The move, although justified on budgetary and editorial grounds, fits into a broader wave of departures by German institutions and political parties from Elon Musk's service. The accusations levelled at X are sharp: there is talk of a "socially toxic platform", of "disinformation" and of "the commercialisation of moderation".
According to DW's official statement, the accounts to be closed include @dw_polski as well as @dw_balkan, @dw_brasil, @dw_croatian, @dw_conflictzone, @dw_europe, @dw_greek, @dw_hindi, @dwnews, @dw_politik,, @dw_shqip, @plus90 and @zapovednikshow.
Those interested will be directed to websites, apps and profiles on platforms where the broadcaster intends to maintain full editorial activity. DW emphasises that it is not abandoning X entirely: the accounts will remain active only in countries with limited press freedom, above all in Iran and Russia, where the platform still serves as an important source of independent information.
The German broadcaster argues that it is closing the accounts because of rising costs. Since 2022, that is, since Musk's takeover of Twitter, the costs associated with using programming interfaces (APIs), the fees for "X Premium Organization" status, and external tools for community management, monitoring, moderation and analytics are said to have risen sharply. At the same time, DW's budget has been subjected to cuts as part of public-sector savings, which no longer allows it to maintain all of its channels at the same professional level as before. The broadcaster also acknowledges that "the conditions for journalistic content on X have changed visibly". DW believes that algorithms promoting controversial and extremist content, poor moderation, a flood of disinformation, and hate speech mean that conducting reliable journalism requires an ever-greater investment of work and resources, while at the same time the quality of interactions on the X platform declines.
DW's decision is not an isolated one. As the netzpolitik.org portal reported on 4 May 2026, just a few days after DW's declaration, the German parliamentary groups of the SPD, Linke and Grüne, along with numerous party structures, announced under the hashtag #WirVerlassenX that they were withdrawing from or scaling back their activity on the X platform. In a joint statement, they write:
"X has descended into chaos. Political debates thrive on an exchange of information that reaches people and informs them. X, by contrast, increasingly promotes disinformation".
For the Polish audience, the closure of the @dw_polski account is especially telling. For many years DW published articles and reprints here about Germany and Europe. The sudden decision may point to a political backdrop.
Does giving up part of its channels on a platform with global reach mean capitulation in the face of the competition, or rather obedience to the German public mission? Giving up its accounts on X may mean a decline in visibility in countries where the platform is still doing well in public discourse.
It is worth noting that DW is not the only public broadcaster facing this dilemma. ARD, ZDF and Tagesschau remain on X, although they themselves admit that this is difficult for them. Meanwhile, alternative platforms such as Bluesky, Threads and Mastodon are gaining popularity among the elites and opinion-forming media in Germany, but they still do not match X in terms of mass reach.
For the Polish media market, the decision by DW's Polish-language division is intriguing, all the more so because this branch is a significant element of many public debates, supplying translated German content to Polish-speaking audiences.
