The Fox News Twitter Account Has Officially Been Dormant for a Year

Josh FeldmanNov 8th, 2019, 2:23 pm
 

Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Today marks one year since the Fox News Twitter account went dormant, and it doesn’t seem like they’re going to re-activate it any time soon.

The network continues to dominate in the cable news ratings, and the decision to stop using the main Twitter account has not adversely affected FoxNews.com’s growing traffic.

If you need a reminder, Mediaite reported last November that Fox News took the move following the protests at Tucker Carlson’s home, as the platform was slow to remove tweets that targeted the host:

A source at Fox News told Mediaite the network’s social media shut-down is a response to the protestors that mobbed the home of Tucker Carlson on Wednesday night.

“[This] is a conscious decision in light of what was done to Tucker,” the source said. They suggested Twitter was fostering a dangerous climate and was not responsive to requests to remove content that targeted the Fox News host.

The Fox Business Twitter Network account also went dormant — the last tweets there were posted on November 9th, 2018.

Fox has not completely abandoned Twitter, of course. In addition to Fox anchors and personalities continuing to use their own accounts, many Fox News and Fox Business programs have continued promoting show content on Twitter. (And the Fox News Radio account is still active.)

For example, the main Fox & Friends Twitter account has not been active since November 12, 2018, but the Fox & Friends First account is still active:

The Twitter account for The Five has been dormant since late November 2018, but, of course, the show’s hosts are still active on their personal accounts.

Carlson himself has sparingly tweeted — mainly sharing commentaries from his show — since last November.

People noticed when Fox didn’t tweet for a week or a month, but now the main network Twitter account has been dormant for a year.

As mentioned above, Fox News hasn’t been hurt digitally by the main account not using Twitter.

And then there’s that other big-ish factor: President Donald Trump regularly promoting Fox News and Fox Business content from his own Twitter account — including tweeting out clips of entire segments.

Here are some recent examples:

All of the videos above were shared by @realDonaldTrump in the last month alone.

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Josh Feldman - Senior Editor

Josh Feldman is a Senior Editor at Mediaite. Email him here: josh@mediaite.com Follow him on Twitter: @feldmaniac