X Strategy or eXit Strategy? A cost-benefit analysis framework

Some considerations to help you clarify your eXit Strategy.

I know: you've spent probably ~15 years diligently developing your following there. At the beginning Twitter was fun, particularly when you didn't have so many followers that you couldn't interact with at least some of them.

As the years went on, of course, that became impossible, and Twitter just became another broadcast channel. But it was an effective one, particularly when management relented and gave you an advertising budget. To make the most of that budget you doubled down, neglecting other comms tactics.

But now, you may have a problem.

Your X metrics probably already started trending downwards when Musk unleashed the trolls, and started pushing their favourite far-right narratives while suppressing your reach. But it happened drip by drip, so you stuck with it because "that's where our audience is", and because abandoning any sunk investment is hard.

abandoning any sunk investment is hard

While calls for organisations across Europe to quit X are getting louder, I've also heard a few arguments for staying. I thought I'd untangle my thoughts on this by developing a framework to explore the costs and benefits of X in 2025.

Leaving X: analysing the costs

Let's start with the costs of leaving X.

Firstly, why leave at all?

Really? Isn't it enough to know that every time you post on X you are directly supporting the world's richest Nazi, who is actively undermining democracy around the world, and has the US President's ear to do it?

Well no, it probably isn't enough: when you're responsible for an organisation's communications strategy, the question is rarely that simple. Because there are hundreds of possible communications tactics and channels you could use, and your resources are limited. Which means you need to make a cost/benefit analysis.

you need to make a cost/benefit analysis

So let's start with the key costs of leaving X:

• losing your audience, and hence the reach of your message
• abandoning the field: silencing your "voice of reason" in the X information environment.

They are closely related: if you don't have much reach, then noone will hear your voice, or notice you've abandoned the field. So let's unpick them one by one:

How's your reach evolving?

How many followers you have on X is far less important than what your X content actually does for you - ie, how many people do you reach, and what happens when you reach them?

So the most important question is actually: how is your reach evolving?

• because if it's falling, that reduces the above costs - it makes more sense to abandon a platform if it's not performing for you, particularly if the decline looks like a long-term trend
• if it's not, great! But do ask yourself if this will continue - can you trust Elon Musk to ensure that your organisation will continue to be treated fairly by his algorithm? Or should you prepare a backup plan?

Because everyone else around here is.

Even if your reach is not currently dropping, it's good strategy to at least explore alternative channels.

Abandoning the field

The second argument to stay concerns what happens when you do reach someone, and essentially says: "People need our information. If we leave X, the last sane voice there will disappear."

I sympathise, but that entire argument hinges on the "information deficit model", which assumes that people will change their views when provided with well-presented facts and arguments.

Trained as a scientist, I used to believe this. Unfortunately, the information deficit model has been thoroughly debunked in political science, psychology, and media studies. Basically:

• People do not absorb your content like dispassionate scientists: they filter it through their cognitive biases, even when your content is not presented within a highly polarized environment (see 43 resources tagged cognitive, or my Hub's psychology overview).
• In fact, they might even double down on their existing beliefs when you challenge them, rather than change their views (21 resources tagged backfire effect)
• These effects get much worse on X, which is optimised for enragement, benefiting extreme content over yours.

The actual persuasive impact of your X presence is low, undermining the "abandoning the field" argument.

That doesn't mean there's no value in X: your followers who value your content will still benefit from your posts (if your posts reach them).

However, there are other ways of getting your message to them, and they may be less costly to you and them. So let's turn to:

Staying on X: your costs

What are the costs of Business as Usual?

The costs mentioned earlier (helping undermine democracy generally, that sort of thing) are costs to society at large. But what additional costs is your organisation paying?

Making things worse

While your posts on X probably won't change anyone's mind, they do legitimise the disinformation X promotes.

When you publish content on the preferred platform of pro-Russian trolls and bots, you're lending your credibility to their content. By insisting that your content should be seen side-by-side with disinformation, your framing is: both content is of equal value.

you're feeding bad actors with content they can distort

Moreover, your content is not just competing for attention with bad actors - you're feeding those bad actors with content they can distort and turn against you. We all know how easy it is on X to take good-faith, fact-based communication and twist them into disinformation or outrage-bait. This is precisely why most trolls keep returning to X after trying Truth Social and Parler: as the latter platforms are custom-built to reflect the trolls' views, they don't provide them with anyone to attack.

When wading through a sewer, expect some shit to stick.

Trapping your followers

While your tweets won't change anyone's mind, they are valued by your followers. Which means your presence is helping trap your followers on X, where they are forced to bathe in a toxic algorithmic soup designed to anger and radicalise them.

Posting on X forces your followers to stay in a toxic environment.

Staying on X, in other words, is bad for the people you are ostensibly staying there for, and risks "losing" them to the forces of manipulation you are ostensibly against. To say nothing of the way X exploits your followers' personal data.

Trashing your reputation

The above costs all damage your reputation.

Let's recap - by staying on X you are:

• not convincing anyone new of your arguments
• lending your credibility to problematic content and framing it as equivalent to yours
• feeding the trolls raw meat
• harming your followers.

It's not a good look.

Costs in summary

A very brief summary of the above arguments:

Costs of staying

• support undermine democracy
• make things worse
• trap your followers in a dangerous environment
• expose your followers to antagonistic disinformation
• your organisation's reputation

Costs of leaving

• losing reach (which will probably drop in the future if it hasn't already)
• abandoning the field (but you're not convincing anyone in an environment as polarised as X)

Obviously, the benefits are more or less the mirror image, as set out in the figure below.

You have more options

So, should you stay or should you go?

And now for the good news: this question is far more nuanced, as you have a whole spectrum of options:

The extremes of this spectrum are to keep paying those costs for doubtful benefits (left), or to close your X account from one day to the next and say goodbye to 10+ years' of followers (right).

Transition strategies

But in the middle there are options where you encourage your followers to move to whatever alternative you've chosen, so you can gradually transition both them and you away from the toxic hellhole X has become. Moreover, these transition options also allow you to experiment with different alternative channels (Mastodon, Bluesky, your newsletter and online community, etc.): offer a few, and see which ones your audiences prefer.

gradually transition both them and you away

Even with this analysis, it may be a hard decision to take. The trick is to take it step by step, without burning too many bridges behind you too soon.

It's just as hard for many individuals to take the step - take me as an example:

I took almost 7 years to close my Meta accounts:

• May 2018: I wrote Don’t #DeleteFacebook. Take back control with digital minimalism
• early 2019: that minimalism strategy allowed me to delete Facebook from my phone
• 2019-2024: without Facebook on my phone I managed to Quiet Quit, keeping my account only for my experimental Messenger chatbots from 2017
• 2025: I deleted all my Meta accounts on Inauguration Day.

I'm still in an advanced transition away from X:

• October 2007 - February 2024: tweeted more or less daily
• February - October 2024: quiet quit (~1 post/month), not including occasionally torturing Proximus (my ISP) for technical support
• 21 October 2024 - present: current strategy (seepinned tweet): posting only some of my most important content, and interacting only on Bluesky.

Breaking up is hard.