Richard Hermer's Attorney General's office has stopped posting on X, citing concerns about disinformation on the platform, according to The Guardian. The office made its final post on a Friday before the policy took effect.

Hermer was appointed Attorney General on 5 July 2024 as a Labour peer and attends Cabinet — meaning this withdrawal carries weight beyond a routine departmental decision. The Attorney General's office is one of the more prominent arms of UK central government to formally exit the platform.

The stated reason is disinformation — a notably specific word choice. Not "toxicity" or "harassment", but a focus on the integrity of the information environment itself. The concern is whether content on the platform can be reliably used as a basis for government communication by a senior law officer's department.

The timing reflects real structural changes at X since Elon Musk acquired the platform in late 2022. Community Notes — a user-driven labelling system — replaced much of X's earlier editorial moderation. Third-party fact-checking partnerships were ended. Content policies were loosened, removing labels and limits on material that had previously been restricted. For a department whose public statements carry legal and political weight, these shifts create a genuine risk: official posts can now attract misleading replies or be amplified alongside false claims without reliable correction mechanisms.

The Attorney General's decision carries an implicit challenge to one of Musk's central claims about the platform. Musk has argued that reduced moderation and greater "free speech" produce a healthier information environment. A senior law officer concluding that the environment is now primarily defined by disinformation functions as a direct institutional response to that argument.

The UK government's relationship with X remains mixed. Some departments and ministers stay active; others have quietly reduced their posting without formal announcements. A formal departure by the Attorney General's office, announced with explicit reasoning rather than simply fading away, sets a different precedent. It documents the basis for the decision, which other departments can cite as they make their own assessments.

This is not the first time public institutions have left social platforms over information quality. When local councils, health bodies, and some national agencies pulled back from Facebook in the early 2020s — citing pandemic-related misinformation — a recognisable pattern emerged: announce the decision with reasoning, preserve existing content, redirect audiences to owned communication channels. Whether the Attorney General's office pursues a similar shift to another platform, or simply accepts reduced reach, has not been reported.

The practical impact on the office is limited. Government communications of real public significance move through Hansard (the official parliamentary record), press offices, and GOV.UK. X functioned primarily as a secondary amplification channel, not as a main record. Losing it narrows audience but does not affect the legal or administrative work.

What matters more is the signal. The Attorney General of England and Wales has now placed an institutional marker on the record about whether X's current moderation structure is compatible with responsible government communication. The position was taken not through testimony or policy papers, but through operational choice.