The EFF is quitting X

The digital privacy and civil liberties nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) announced on Thursday, May 30, 2024, that it is ceasing all posting activity on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter. The decision, made public from the organization's headquarters in San Francisco, California, was driven primarily by a dramatic and sustained collapse in content reach and engagement on the platform, which has rendered it an ineffective tool for the group's advocacy and public education mission. In a detailed blog post authored by EFF's social media and video manager, Kenyatta Thomas, the organization quantified the stark decline. The nonprofit, which champions digital rights, privacy, and free expression online, revealed that it once garnered between 50 to 100 million impressions per month on the platform. However, this reach has evaporated. Thomas stated that in the past year, 1,500 posts earned only about 13 million impressions in total, meaning a single post today receives less than 3% of the views a comparable tweet did just seven years ago. This precipitous drop has made the considerable effort required to maintain a presence on X no longer justifiable. The move by the EFF represents a significant symbolic departure from a platform that was once a central hub for tech policy discourse, activism, and real-time news. The organization's exit underscores a broader trend of frustration among activists, journalists, and nonprofits with X's evolving algorithms and policies under owner Elon Musk, which many argue have de-prioritized authoritative content in favor of engagement-driven material. While the EFF will maintain accounts on other platforms like Mastodon, Bluesky, and Instagram, its withdrawal from X signals a critical reassessment of where meaningful digital public squares exist for serious policy advocacy in the current social media landscape.