This may not be a great omen for X's future prospects, especially if other media organizations decide to follow suit.

This week, Australia's national broadcaster the ABC has announced that it's shutting down all but four of its X/Twitter accounts due to changes at the app as a result of Elon Musk's leadership.
The government-funded ABC is an important news provider for many regional Australians, in particular, and has been a go-to source of updates in the app for a long time. Now, however, ABC no longer considers the platform to offer significant value, instead finding more engagement elsewhere among the social apps.
According to The ABC:

The vast majority of the ABC's social media audience is located on official sites on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, with TikTok forecast to have the strongest growth over the next four years. We want to focus our effort and resources on where our audiences are.

The ABC has been weighing this decision for some time, the broadcaster has closed several of its largest X accounts earlier in the year to assess the impact on engagement. It determined that the reduction in account actually drove more traffic to its other X profiles, which mitigated any loss, and therefore resulted in a reduction in posting workload without any significant impact.

But it has also acknowledged another important motivation for that decision:

"We also determined that closing individual program accounts helps limit the exposure of team members to the toxic interactions that unfortunately are becoming more prevalent on X. Concerningly, X has reduced its trust and safety teams. Furthermore, it is bringing in charges which make the platform increasingly costly to use."

Of course, journalists do take their share of hammering on social media, but because the ABC is publicly funded, the venom directed at particular ABC personalities has, on occasion, bordered on sheer nastiness.

The ABC claims this kind of attack is becoming more common on X under Musk, who might be simply the result of shifting approaches to moderation at the app or perhaps is a consequence of the emboldening that users feel from Musk's own use of the platform, which often features him attacking his critics and those he disagrees with.
The ABC also notes the increase in charges, referring to how X is pushing organizations to pay for X Premium (formerly X Blue) and/or Verification for Organizations. That may seem like a minor element, given the $8 cost for Premium, but there are over 56 separate ABC regional offices in Australia, and each has its own local sport and news desks, many of which also have their own X accounts.

Add them all up, and it indeed becomes quite a cost. And though X is not collecting verification fees from businesses, the growing pressure to enable such for enhanced functionality, particularly for brands, can prove costly for the company.

It might seem a small deal at this moment, considering it's an Australian news publisher, anyway with a quite limited audience, by global standards. But the fact that any news organization is now contemplating a move away from X is quite significant.

Twitter has long been a vital platform for news organizations, ensuring that they keep their audiences abreast of the latest information. But with Musk himself continuing to hammer the "mainstream media", and questioning elements of their reporting, more providers are indeed taking a fresh look at the value of the platform, which could see more follow ABC's lead.

But that would be enough to see X lose the status of being the go-to source for current news. If more journalists begin updating their audiences on, say, Threads instead, that will eventually push more users into that direction, which could eventually see the tide turn against X in this respect.

And of course, under Elon, X will evolve into something completely different in either direction, with a greater emphasis on video content and an expansion of its use case into new areas. As such, perhaps it doesn't see that as much of an issue anyway, but losing its status as the go-to source for live updates will be a huge blow to the app.

It's nothing right now, and one news publisher leaving won't see any major impact. But it's not a great endorsement for how news organizations view the re-branded platform.