The London marathon joined the tendency of the boycott of the X belonging to Elon Musk, formerly known as Twitter, following online abuses directed towards the British athlete Eilish McColgan in the preparation of the Sunday race in the British capital.
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The London marathon joined the boycott tendency of the social networking platform, formerly known as Twitter, with the director of events Hugh Arch accusing the “Descending in a Gutter” website since the CEO of Tesla and the founder of Spacex, Elon Musk, acquired the website in 2022.
The description of Brasher of X and the boycott of the website event was a response to online abuses directed to the British athlete Eilish McColgan, who was described as someone “resembling a skeleton” after having published videos of his training before the race this Sunday.
“I think it is odious the abuse that she suffered. How she was held and responded to this is exemplary. But there are social networks which are particularly vitriolic and which descend into a gutter. And following this, the events of London Marathon in fact released one of these chains”, Brasher was cited by the Marathon of London. The guardian.
“He’s just looking at this channel and vitriol. He stopped being a rational conversation. He stopped being a positive place,” he added.
The London marathon was to be a “strength for good”: Brasher
The London marathon was founded in 1981 by the father of Brasher, Chris and John Disley, both athletics athletes. And according to the director of the event, their objective was that the London marathon was a “force for good”.
“One of the objectives of my father and John was to show that on the occasion, the family of humanity could be joyful together and celebrate together. This is what is the London marathon. This is a force for good. And we did not feel that Channel shared these values, and therefore we came out,” he added.
London Marathon has 191,000 subscribers on X and have not published on the website for three months. The London Marathon Foundation, which has just over 1,000 subscribers, has also joined the boycott of the micro-blogging platform.
The Bundesliga Club FC, based in Hamburg, had become the first major football team to boycott X in November of last year. Since their boycott, the club has passed to a Bluesky rival platform, founded by Jack Dorsey, who had also founded Twitter in 2007.
British newspaper The guardianhad also left the website this month, describing X as a “toxic media platform”.
