Rock stars Jack White and Trent Reznor deactivated their Twitter accounts on Sunday after criticizing the platform’s new owner Elon Musk.
White removed the account for his label, Third Man Records, which had a little more than 166,000 followers. In a statement he shared on Instagram, the singer blasted Musk for restoring former U.S. president Donald Trump’s account.
“Absolutely disgusting, Elon. That is officially an a**hole move,” he wrote. “You intend to give platforms to known liars and wash your hands like pontius pilate and claim no responsibility?”
White asked Musk “how many more billions do you need that you have to risk democracy itself to obtain it?” and accused him of “using your power to promote horrible, violence inducing liars, who are taking the country and the world backwards and endangering the democracy that made you rich and successful in the first place.”
White apologized to Third Man Records artists who have lost an outlet to promote their music “but we are not going to even tangentially support you or this platform that will help conspiracy spreading liars and out of touch narci-capitalists tear this country apart.”
Reznor, who tweeted infrequently but had 1.6 million followers, pulled the plug on his account after telling The Hollywood Reporter last week that he was “about to depart.”
The Nine Inch Nails frontman explained: “We don’t need the arrogance of the billionaire class to feel like they can just come in and solve everything. Even without him involved, I just find that it has become such a toxic environment. For my mental health, I need to tune out. I don’t feel good being there anymore.”