Media Release: Women’s Aid Ends Use of X
Wednesday 7th January 2026: Women’s Aid, a national organisation working to prevent and address the impact of domestic violence and abuse including coercive control in Ireland, will no longer maintain a presence on the platform X from 8th January 2026.
The organisation has watched the increased levels of unchecked hate, misogyny, racism and anti-LGBTI+ content on the platform with growing unease and concern. The current scandal which has seen the creation and sharing of AI deepfakes, non-consensual intimate imagery, and production of child sexual abuse material by X’s own AI Grok, in breach of the platforms own guidelines and regulations is a tipping point.
This online violence against women and children – especially girls – has often devastating real life impacts and we no longer view it as appropriate to use such a platform to share our work.
This has not been an easy decision. Women’s Aid was an early user of social media, including Twitter/X since 2009. We have engaged with and informed our supporters of the prevalence and impact of domestic abuse, promote our frontline support services to those affected and push for positive social change.
We firmly believe that social media platforms have a crucial role to play in a healthy society, providing crucial townhall spaces for thoughtful, respectful, constructive and positive dialogue. By leaving we acknowledge that we are ceding the stage to the malign actors, and bots who will continue to overrun the space creating and spreading disinformation and other harmful content with effective impunity. However, as an organisation working to end violence against women and children, we balance the costs with any benefits to our continued engagement in this space and find we can no longer tolerate this situation.
While we have reduced leverage on this platform, we call on Governments and Regulators in both Ireland and at EU level to act swiftly and decisively to create effective accountability, legislation and regulation to ensure companies must have guardrails that protect truth, and prevent harm so that in the future any user can use X, and any online platform safely.
Ends.
Please attribute any quotes taken from this statement to Sarah Benson, CEO, Women’s Aid.
For more information contact Christina Sherlock at 087 919 2457 or by email to christina.sherlock@womensaid.ie or Martina Genockey on 086 206 7766 or email martina.genockey@womensaid.ie.
About Women’s Aid
Women’s Aid is a national organisation working to prevent and address the impact of domestic violence and abuse since 1974. They do this by advocating, influencing, training, and campaigning for effective responses to reduce the scale and impacts of domestic abuse on women and children and providing high-quality, specialised, integrated support services. See www.womensaid.ie