{"id":233623,"date":"2026-04-09T21:26:18","date_gmt":"2026-04-09T21:26:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/09\/eff-is-the-latest-organization-to-leave-x-techcrunch\/"},"modified":"2026-04-09T21:26:18","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T21:26:18","slug":"eff-is-the-latest-organization-to-leave-x-techcrunch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/09\/eff-is-the-latest-organization-to-leave-x-techcrunch\/","title":{"rendered":"EFF is the latest organization to leave X | TechCrunch"},"content":{"rendered":"


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X\u2019s decline in engagement and its ability to drive traffic is the topic du jour, with several days of bad PR for the Elon Musk-owned social network.<\/p>\n

Over the weekend, X\u2019s head of product, Nikita Bier, and data analyst Nate Silver, previously of FiveThirtyEight, feuded over<\/a> whether or not X was still capable of sending traffic to publishers. This was followed by a report from NiemanLab<\/a> on Wednesday, which suggested that adding links to X posts is bad for engagement.<\/p>\n

On Thursday, the prominent digital rights group and nonprofit EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) announced<\/a> it, too, was leaving X after seeing decreasing returns from its posts.<\/p>\n

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After almost twenty years on the platform, EFF is logging off of X.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t a decision we made lightly, but it might be overdue. \ud83e\uddf5(1\/5)<\/p>\n

\u2014 EFF (@EFF) April 9, 2026<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

In a blog post,<\/a> EFF\u2019s social media manager, Kenyatta Thomas, said that leaving X after almost 20 years on the platform wasn\u2019t \u201ca decision we made lightly,\u201d but explained that the math no longer works out in its favor.<\/p>\n

In 2018, EFF\u2019s posts to Twitter saw between 50 and 100\u00a0million\u00a0impressions per month, she said. By 2024, its 2,500 posts on the social platform generated around 2 million impressions per month. Last year, EFF\u2019s 1,500 posts earned roughly 13 million impressions for the entire year.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo put it bluntly, an X post today receives less than 3% of the views a single tweet delivered seven years ago,\u201d Thomas wrote. <\/p>\n

The organization will continue to post on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and elsewhere on the open social web, noting that its presence on a platform is not an endorsement of these services. <\/p>\n

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Techcrunch event<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSan Francisco, CA<\/span>
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t|<\/span>
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOctober 13-15, 2026<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cWe stay because the people on those platforms deserve access to information, too. We stay because some of our most-read posts are the ones criticizing the very platform we\u2019re posting on,\u201d Thomas said. \u201cX is no longer where the fight is happening.\u201d (Ouch!) <\/em><\/p>\n

EFF is one of many organizations to ditch X,<\/a> following other high-profile exits that have included various news publishers like NPR<\/a>, PBS<\/a>, The Guardian<\/a>, Le Monde<\/a>, and others<\/a>, as well as many academics<\/a>, celebs<\/a>, local<\/a> governments<\/a>, and more<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The news organizations may have had various reasons to leave X, but traffic could have kept them around. For some, like NPR and PBS, the departure was a reaction to Musk\u2019s decision to falsely label them as \u201cstate-affiliated media,\u201d a title typically reserved<\/a> for mouthpieces of governments that lack editorial independence \u2014 such as Russia and China-based propaganda networks. For others, like Le Monde, it was a reaction to Musk\u2019s close ties with Trump.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s easier to take a stand when you have little to nothing to lose. <\/p>\n

Today, any source of traffic is highly valuable, as publishers deal with shifts in online consumer behavior. AI usage is ramping up<\/a>, killing traffic to publishers at the same time that news sites are seeing declining referrals from search engines and Facebook. That\u2019s left many newsrooms to fold under the financial pressure or conduct layoffs.<\/p>\n

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Even when a newsletter *does* generate a lot of on-platform discussion because I put more work in, the conversion to off-site traffic is very middling. Maybe 2-3% of the readership for a Silver Bulletin article instead of ~1%. At 538, ~15% of our traffic came from Twitter!<\/p>\n

\u2014 Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) April 8, 2026<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

In Bier\u2019s debate with Silver, he accused newsrooms of using X wrong.<\/p>\n

Bier stressed<\/a> that news outlets like The New York Times should be posting in a way to encourage conversation on X\u2019s platform, not just using X as a news feed to publish a simple headline and a link. Silver, however, pointed out that even when he did the work to generate on-platform discussion, it didn\u2019t provide much of a lift in terms of traffic to his website.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe conversion to off-site traffic is very middling,\u201d Silver wrote<\/a> on X. \u201cMaybe 2-3% of the readership for a Silver Bulletin article instead of ~1%.\u201d By comparison, he noted that Twitter used to send FiveThirtyEight around 15% of its traffic.<\/p>\n

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These are the Twitter\/X accounts with the most engagement so far in 2026. I suppose I had some intuition for how bad it was, but jeez, this is what you get when the ecosystem is broken. pic.twitter.com\/zHrS7T0iVD<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) April 5, 2026<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

Even some of Silver\u2019s detractors seemed to agree<\/a> with his assessment of X, which he published in a newsletter<\/a>. Namely, X is now dominated by conservative influencers, and many top accounts in terms of engagement are low quality. (For instance, Silver pointed out that the account \u201cCatturd,\u201d a right-wing influencer known for spreading conspiracy theories<\/a>, sees more engagement than The New York Times.)<\/p>\n

Musk, of course, dismissed this analysis, calling Silver\u2019s data \u201cbullshit\u201d in a reply.<\/a><\/p>\n

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NiemanLab\u2019s own analysis<\/a> involving 18 large publishers\u2019 most recent 200 posts generally supported Silver\u2019s claims. It found that newsrooms publishing links alongside X posts were seeing poor engagement \u2014\u00a0including on future posts.<\/p>\n

That doesn\u2019t necessarily mean X is downranking their posts \u2014 the company claims it stopped doing that<\/a> \u2014 it could just mean that X is not as happening as it was before.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n