A city councillor is pushing the City of Ottawa to suspend all of its accounts on the social media platform X, which she calls “very negative,” rife with misinformation and tied to the threat of punishing tariffs against Canada.
Orléans West-Innes Coun. Laura Dudas has given notice of a motion she will make to council’s finance and corporate services committee next week. It asks city staff to draw up a plan to suspend the accounts and migrate to other platforms.
In her motion, she said X and owner Elon Musk no longer uphold the values of “transparency, impartiality, respect and accountability,” which Dudas views as core principles for the city.
I think that I agree. They’d probably spend more time on the site if they weren’t posting to Twitter all the time. Cities across Canada in general would likely benefit from spending a bit more time and money on improving the quality of content of their public-facing sites. Half the time I need to find something, it’s placed on some weird standalone page whose link I found halfway through a paragraph instead of in an organized sidebar or a list.
Would probably improve accessibility too, though I wonder if the current site is frustrating to people who need to use screen readers or if it’s only annoying to (some?) sighted people.