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Olaf Scholz with a smartphone
Photo: Kay Nietfeld / picture alliance / dpa
Mass layoffs, the release of dubious accounts and confusion about verified accounts - the first few weeks at Twitter under the new boss Elon Musk were, to put it mildly, turbulent.
And it is still very open where the billionaire is steering the recently acquired company.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) is considering withdrawing from the online platform because of these imponderables.
"The Federal Chancellor and the Federal Press Office are taking a very close look at the development of Twitter since it was taken over by Elon Musk," government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit told the editorial network Germany (RND).
In doing so, a balance is drawn up »between the development of the platform on the one hand and possible alternatives that can be used instead« on the other.
"We have the task of providing broad information about the work of the federal government and want to use as many channels as possible to reach users where they are getting information anyway," Hebestreit told RND.
Twitter is a path established by the previous government, with which Scholz can reach around 600,000 and the government spokesman around 100,000 followers.
It would have been "very short" to "give up this information channel immediately without having an alternative," Hebestreit continued.
"Nevertheless, we cannot turn a blind eye to problematic developments on this network that blossom more and more."
Musk acquired Twitter for $44 billion at the end of October.
He then fired not only the management, but also around half of his 7,500 employees.
Critics fear that Musk could drastically limit the fight against the spread of hate speech and fake news on Twitter.
Because is already gone from Twitter
As a consequence, more and more previous users are turning away from the short message service. Earlier this week, for example, the Prime Minister of Lower Saxony, Stephan Weil (SPD), deleted his account.
In justification, he explained: "A lack of controls and verifications on Twitter are increasingly leading to the mass spread of hate and hate speech, misinformation and conspiracy tales."
Chancellor Scholz is the first tweeting Chancellor who, in addition to the speaker and government profile, also has a personal account on the platform.
However, according to Hebestreit, the news is not written by himself, but by a team in the Federal Press Office.
On the other hand, no channel for Scholz will be set up on the Chinese video clip platform Tiktok, Hebestreit explained.
A corresponding decision has already been made.
According to the government spokesman, among other things, there was an audit note from the Federal Press Office, "which clearly said: We should think twice about whether we as the German federal government want to be present on a Chinese platform".
That convinced him not to do it, said the government spokesman.
jok/AFP