Women’s Aid, a national organisation working to prevent and address the impact of domestic violence and abuse, including coercive control, in Ireland, will no longer maintain a presence on the platform X from 8th January 2026.
The organisation has watched the increased levels of unchecked hate, misogyny, racism and anti-LGBTI+ content on the platform with growing unease and concern. The current scandal, which has seen the creation and sharing of AI deepfakes, non-consensual intimate imagery, and production of child sexual abuse material by X’s own AI Grok, in breach of the platform’s own guidelines and regulations, is a tipping point.
This online violence against women and children – especially girls – has often devastating real-life impacts, and we no longer view it as appropriate to use such a platform to share our work.
This has not been an easy decision. Women’s Aid was an early user of social media, including Twitter/X since 2009. We have engaged with and informed our supporters of the prevalence and impact of domestic abuse, promote our frontline support services to those affected and push for positive social change.
We firmly believe that social media platforms have a crucial role to play in a healthy society, providing crucial town hall spaces for thoughtful, respectful, constructive and positive dialogue. By leaving, we acknowledge that we are ceding the stage to the malign actors and bots who will continue to overrun the space, creating and spreading disinformation and other harmful content with effective impunity.
However, as an organisation working to end violence against women and children, we balance the costs with any benefits to our continued engagement in this space and find we can no longer tolerate this situation.
While we have reduced leverage on this platform, we call on Governments and Regulators in both Ireland and at EU level to act swiftly and decisively to create effective accountability, legislation and regulation to ensure companies must have guardrails that protect truth, and prevent harm so that in the future any user can use X, and any online platform safely.
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