Parts of the party have attracted the attention of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency for possible right-wing extremism.
The academic institutions which signed Friday’s statement include Berlin’s Humboldt University and a number of faculties which had already stopped using X, such as Berlin’s Freie Universitaet.
“Changes on the X platform make it untenable to use it any further,” they said, citing as an example the use of algorithms to boost “right-wing populist” content.
Two universities in the Austrian city of Innsbruck also put their names to the statement, which said the withdrawal from X “underlines the institutions’ efforts for the sake of fact-based communication and against anti-democratic forces”.
The universities are the latest in a string of German institutions to announce they are abandoning X.
On Thursday, the Federal Court of Justice said it would no longer post on the site, as did several labour unions.
In recent months, other businesses and organisations, such as Bundesliga football team St Pauli and supermarket giant Aldi Nord, have also quit X.
The German government said it has no immediate plans to stop using the platform.
Government spokeswoman Christiane Hoffmann told a press conference on Friday: “We are very concerned about how X has developed but at the same time we have to constantly weigh up how we can reach people whom we otherwise wouldn’t be able to address.”
“For the moment we have decided to keep using our channels on X but it is a constant process of evaluation,” she said.
Source: CNA
