EFF is the latest organization to leave X

The decline of X’s engagement and ability to drive traffic is the topic of the day, with several days of bad PR for the Elon Musk-owned social network.

Over the weekend, X’s head of product, Nikita Beer, and data analyst Nate Silver, formerly of FiveThirtyEight, The feud is over Whether X is still able to send traffic to publishers remains to be seen. This was followed by A Report from NiemanLab on Wednesday, which pointed out that adding links to X posts is bad for engagement.

On Thursday, prominent digital rights group and non-profit EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation). Announce She was also leaving X after seeing a decline in revenue from her posts.

After nearly twenty years on the platform, the EFF is signing off on X.

This was not a decision we made lightly, but it may be overdue. 🧵(1/5)

–EFF (@EFF) April 9, 2026

in blog post, Kenyatta Thomas, the EFF’s social media director, said leaving

In 2018, EFF Twitter posts saw between 50 and 100 million monthly impressions, she said. By 2024, her 2,500 posts on the social media platform generated about 2 million monthly impressions. Last year, the EFF’s 1,500 posts received nearly 13 million impressions over the entire year.

“Honestly, X’s post today receives less than 3% of the views that a single tweet did seven years ago,” Thomas wrote.

The organization will continue to post on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and other places on the open social media network, noting that its presence on one of the platforms does not constitute an endorsement of these services.

“We stay because people on those platforms deserve access to information, too,” Thomas said. “We stay because some of our most-read posts are those that criticize the very platform we publish on.” “X is no longer where the battle takes place.” (Oh!)

EFF is one of many organizations to give up X, Other high-profile exits followed which included several news publishers such as NPR, TV show, The Guardian, the worldand OthersAs well as many more Academics, Celebrities, local Governmentsand more.

News organizations may have had different reasons for leaving X, but the traffic could have kept it in place. For some, like NPR and PBS, the departure was a reaction to Musk’s decision to falsely label them as “state media,” a title Usually reserved To the mouthpieces of governments that lack editorial independence – such as propaganda networks in Russia and China. For others, like Le Monde, it was a reaction to Musk’s close ties to Trump.

But it’s easier to take a position when you have nothing to lose.

Today, any traffic source is extremely valuable, as publishers grapple with shifts in online consumer behavior. The use of artificial intelligence is increasinghalting traffic to publishers at the same time as news sites see a decline in referrals from search engines and Facebook. This has left many newsrooms vulnerable to financial pressures or layoffs.

Even when a newsletter generates a lot of discussions on the platform because I put more work into it, the conversion to off-site traffic is very average. Maybe 2-3% of readers for a Silver Bulletin article instead of ~1%. At 538, about 15% of our traffic came from Twitter!

– Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) April 8, 2026

In Pierre’s debate with Silver, he accused newsrooms of using X incorrectly.

Casket He stressed That news outlets like the New York Times should publish in a way that encourages conversation on the X platform, not just use X as a news feed to post a simple headline and link. However, Silver noted that even when he worked to create discussion on the platform, it did not provide much lift in terms of traffic to his website.

“Conversion to off-site traffic is very average,” Silver said books On By comparison, he noted that Twitter was sending FiveThirtyEight about 15% of its traffic.

These are the Twitter/X accounts with the most engagement so far in 2026. I suppose I had some intuition about how bad it would get, but gosh, this is what you get when the ecosystem crashes. pic.twitter.com/zHrS7T0iVD

– Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) April 5, 2026

Even some of Silver’s critics seemed so He agrees With its rating of X, which is Published in a newsletter. Specifically, X is now dominated by conservative influencers, and many of the top accounts have low-quality engagement. (For example, Silver pointed to the account of Catturd, a well-known right-wing influencer.) Spreading conspiracy theoriesis witnessing greater interaction than the New York Times.)

Naturally, Musk rejected this analysis, calling Silver’s data “nonsense.” In response.

NiemanLab’s own analysis Which includes the most recent 200 posts from 18 major publishers that generally support Silver’s claims. I found that newsroom post links along with X posts saw poor engagement, including future posts.

This does not necessarily mean that X lowers the rating of his posts, the company claims that I stopped doing that – It could mean that X does not happen as it used to.