Electronic Frontier Foundation Leaves X: Traffic Collapses and Three Requests to Elon Musk Ignored
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) logged off from X on April 9, 2026, after almost twenty years on the canary social media platform. The decision, announced via an official blog post signed by social media manager Kenyatta Thomas, was not entirely sudden and follows a prolonged and systematic decline in engagement.
The Numbers that Closed the Discussion
In 2018, the EFF posted between five and ten tweets a day, gathering between 50 and 100 million monthly impressions. In 2024, with 2,500 posts published over the year, EFF gathered around 2 million impressions per month. In 2025, with 1,500 posts, the annual total stopped at around 13 million—fewer views in twelve months than a single tweet received in 2018. The EFF summarized everything with a formula that leaves little room for interpretation: today a post on X generates less than 3% of the views it guaranteed seven years ago.
After almost twenty years on the platform, EFF is logging off of X. This isn’t a decision we made lightly, but it might be overdue. 🧵(1/5)
— EFF (@EFF)
April 9, 2026
This is not an isolated case. According to the 2026 Social Media Benchmark, the median engagement rate on X has dropped to 0.12%, the lowest among all major social platforms. TikTok, during the same period, registers an engagement of 3.70%, while Instagram remains around 0.48%. In the first months of 2025, X had already lost 27.6% of its active users, with a hemorrhage of around 4.4 million accounts. The average usage time had decreased by 30%.
Three Requests, No Response
The numerical aspect is the most measurable, but there are other reasons that led the Electronic Frontier Foundation to distance itself from Twitter. When Elon Musk acquired Twitter in October 2022, the EFF made three specific requests: transparent content moderation with public policies and clear appeal processes in line with the Santa Clara Principles; actual implementation of end-to-end encryption for direct messages; and effective control tools for users and third-party developers, including interoperability. None of these requests have been fulfilled.
Musk fired the entire team dedicated to human rights and reduced staff at locations where Twitter had historically resisted censorial pressures from authoritarian governments. The EFF has never considered Twitter a problem-free platform, criticizing it almost from the start, but acknowledges a clear change of pace: the “old” Twitter defended its users, even in court. The current X does not.
The Facebook and TikTok Knot
The most delicate part of the statement concerns the EFF's presence on platforms with equally problematic histories. The organization is aware of the apparent contradiction: leaving X while invoking ethical standards, but remaining on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. The response is direct and articulated: the EFF's mission is not only aimed at those who have already adopted alternative tools or migrated to the fediverse. The people most exposed to violations of digital rights are often those most integrated into mainstream platforms, and for these individuals leaving is not a viable option.
The organization provides concrete examples: those managing small businesses reliant on Instagram for customers, those coordinating abortion funds using TikTok to disseminate crucial information, those living in isolation who find in the network the only accessible form of community. The presence on these platforms, writes the EFF, is not an endorsement: it is a tool to provide information and resources to those who need it most, while also criticizing those very platforms from within. Some of the organization’s most-read posts, the statement notes, are those that criticize the platform on which they are published.
A Farewell in the Context of a Wider Exodus
The EFF is not the first structured entity to take this step. The Guardian left X in November 2024, followed by European institutions and historical memory organizations like the International Auschwitz Committee, which justified its exit with the uncontrolled spread of anti-Semitism and misinformation on the platform. The peculiarity of the EFF case is that the organization is not leaving X for purely political or image reasons: it brings data, compares periods, and shows trends’ evolutions. The decision is the result of a cost-benefit analysis applied to almost twenty years of history.
When you go online, your rights should go with you. X is no longer where the fight is happening. EFF takes on big fights, and we win by putting our time, skills, and members’ support where they will have the most impact. Right now, that means Bluesky, Mastodon, LinkedIn,
— EFF (@EFF)
April 9, 2026
The EFF’s activities will shift to Bluesky, Mastodon, LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and YouTube, in addition to the official site eff.org. The phrase with which the organization closes its statement is both a recognition and a positioning: "X is no longer where the fight is happening."