EFF leaves X citing plummeting engagement

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a digital rights nonprofit, announced on Thursday that it is leaving X after almost 20 years on the platform. The organization stated that the decision was driven by a massive drop in engagement. In 2018, EFF’s posts on the platform received between 50 and 100 million impressions per month. By 2024, its 2,500 posts on the social network generated around 2 million impressions per month, while last year its 1,500 posts earned roughly 13 million impressions for the entire year. Kenyatta Thomas, EFF’s social media manager, stated that leaving was not a decision the organization made lightly. To explain the shift, Thomas noted, “To put it bluntly, an X post today receives less than 3% of the views a single tweet delivered seven years ago.” She added that the platform is no longer where the fight is happening.

The departure highlights a broader struggle for publishers and organizations trying to drive off-site traffic from the Elon Musk-owned social network. Data analyst Nate Silver reported that the conversion to off-site traffic is very middling, estimating it at maybe 2-3% of the readership for a Silver Bulletin article instead of ~1%. By comparison, Silver noted that Twitter previously sent around 15% of traffic to his former outlet, FiveThirtyEight. A report published on Wednesday by NiemanLab, a journalism research organization, supported these observations. Analyzing the most recent 200 posts from 18 large publishers, NiemanLab reported that adding links to X posts is bad for engagement.

The platform’s environment has also shifted. Silver reported that X is now dominated by conservative influencers, noting that the account “Catturd,” a right-wing influencer known for spreading conspiracy theories, receives more engagement than The New York Times. Musk dismissed Silver’s analysis, calling the data bullshit in a reply. However, EFF joins a growing list of organizations exiting the platform, including news publishers like NPR, PBS, The Guardian, and Le Monde. For NPR and PBS, the departures followed Musk’s decision to falsely label them as state-affiliated media, a designation typically reserved for state-run outlets in countries like Russia and China. While X claims it has stopped downranking posts with links, the declining engagement could just mean the platform is not as happening as it was before.

Why it matters

EFF’s departure underscores a broader shift where news organizations and nonprofits are abandoning X due to declining traffic referrals and engagement, challenging the platform’s utility for professional distribution.