Bundesliga's Werder Bremen leaves social media platform X

Werder Bremen has decided to leave the social media platform X, the Bundesliga club announced citing the increased radicalization of the microblogging platform under billionaire Elon Musk.

This was announced by Klaus Filbry, chairman of the management board, at the club's annual general meeting on Monday.

The move comes after league rivals St Pauli Hamburg announced its withdrawal from X for the same reasons last week.

"Since Elon Musk took over the platform, hate speech, hatred against minorities, right-wing extremist posts and conspiracy theories have increased at an incredible rate under the guise of freedom of expression," the Bremen side said in a statement on its website.

"The radicalization of the platform is being driven by Elon Musk and his posts, which include, transphobic, anti-Semitic and conspiracy-mongering posts," the statement continued.

"Almost nothing is being sanctioned on the platform anymore. The algorithms and control of the platform are completely opaque. Elon Musk is also instrumentalizing the platform into a political weapon, as was recently seen in the US election campaign."

The club, which joined then Twitter in 2008, said it hopes that many of its more than 600,000 X followers will follow the club on BlueSky, a platform with similar features to X. By Monday morning the club's number of followers had dropped to under 540,000.

St Pauli responded to the Bremen X-farewell with a post on Bluesky. "What's green and also on BlueSky? Werder Breeeeemen! A warm welcome to our dear friends from the Weser!"